[26 THE CHARACTERS OF GENERA. 
CHAPTER IX. 
THE CHARACTERS OF GENERA. 
Tue well-known meaning of the words generic 
and specific may serve, in the absence of a more 
precise definition, to express the relative impor- 
tance of those groups of animals called Genera 
and Species in our scientific systems. The Genus 
is the more comprehensive of the two kinds of 
groups, while the Species is the most precisely 
defined, or at least the most easily recognized, 
of all the divisions of the Animal Kingdom. 
But neither the term Genus nor Species has 
always been taken in the same sense. Genus es- 
pecially has varied in its acceptation, from the 
time when Aristotle applied it indiscriminately 
to any kind of comprehensive group, from the 
Classes down to what we commonly call Gena 
till the present day. 
But we have already seen, that, instead of 
calling all the more comprchensive divisions by 
the name of Genera, modern science has applied 
special names to each of them, and we have now 
Families, Orders, Classes, and Branches above 
