REMARKS ON THE FIGURES OF PLATE XXIV. 3 
is the fount and source of specific variety, and which law 
seems to forewarn the comparative. reasoner that species 
is nonentity, or the loss of some quantity proper to arche- 
type unity and uniformity? What is this law which 
operates for the creation of special variety? Is this law 
much more simple in-its acts than the complexity of 
laboured argument would confess it to be? Is the sim- 
plicity that which belongs to Nature? and is the fog and 
mist of sophistry and verbose difficulty all our own? 
What is the form of plus unity, the integer or archetype 
to which all skeleton species may be compared as propor- 
tional quantities? Does this figure of unity contain all 
skeleton minus variety, just as fig. C may be seen to con- 
tai fig..D. If there be in Nature such an archetype 
quantity, to which all skeleton variety may be referred as 
minus creations, then may we hope for such a revelation 
of the law of form and resulting design as will prove 
that the eye of reason, when searching through the facts 
of comparison, will teem with the fruition of a subject 
which the differential method * carried on in pursuit of 
the limit of special variety can never encompass, even 
though they arm vision with the microscope, and lay the 
oppressive cables of a nomenclature upon the infinitesimal 
world. 
livery subject amongst the many of which the vos 
is pregnant has a definite and indefinite, a limited and 
The 
definite purpose of enquiry is some general principle which 
may be said to encompass not only the known facts which 
relate thereunto, but even the unknown facts, or all those 
a limitless side, wherewith inquiry may busy itself. 
which may possibly happen within the circle of that one 
enclosing principle. The indefinite inquiry is, on the 
other hand, that which endlessly pursues the facts of 
variety, as being things isolated and distinct from each 
other, and never subjects them to the rule of comparison, 
which alone can yield the cause and effect of natural 
operation, and teach us something of the mode, the source, 
and objects of their creation. This pursuit after specific 
variety is one of preadamite date, and marks the primitive 
and barbaric stage of every people. 
this mode of investigating the natura had commenced, 
‘We cannot tell when . 
and no one can foretel, with any probability, when it will 
end, for it is a subject without limit, it withers hope and 
holds out no promise of aconsummation. It is like a pil- 
grimage to the sea-shore, undertaken for the purpose of 
counting the pebbles there, or like a sojourn in some Val- 
lombrosa with the object of numbering the autumnal 
leaves. There is no purpose or principle attending upon this 
mode of study. The infinite promises nothing to any human 
effort. We may lay the hand upon the pulse and count 
its beating through a long life, but this will never teach 
us the guid est? And so we find that the octogenarian 
sinks under the fruitless rule of number, to no better 
effect than when, in his first childhood, he commenced his 
labour. | 
If each species presented to us as a creation fixed, dis- 
tinct and per se, then each one of them would demand a 
separate consideration ; but as the case is otherwise}, as 
every speciality is but a subdivision of unity, so must we 
read all species as being the simples of a compound 
integer, having their several places in that integer or 
whole quantity, and to which they naturally refer. If the 
ass, the horse, and the ¢ertium quid or hybrid manifest all 
three a somewhat common character, then we give them 
collectively the general term animal, and though we by no 
means would thereby imply that they are absolutely the 
same, still we shall not, upon this admission, undertake 
the somniferous labour of searching for the limits of their 
distinctiveness by numbering the hairs upon their hides, 
or of anatomising their infinitesimal differentials upon the 
field of the microscope. In like manner, and upon the 
same principle of analogy, shall our natural human weak- 
ness forego the differential method in the comparison of 
figs. A and B,C and D, and make search for the law 
which creates those figures as homologues, and which 
varies them as quantities t+. Hence we shall prefer the 
secure repose upon that generalisation which spontaneously 
recognises their analogies, and at the same time admits 
the fact that fig. C is plus that costal pair, which being 
lost to D, causes this latter to be plus the lumbar vertebra, 
and which fact leaves it to be understood that the vertebral 
quantity is a proportional of the costo-vertebral plus form. 
* “Species autem illa, abscissto infiniti recte vocari possit.”—Bacon, Novum Organum Svientiarum, aph. xxvi. 
+ “La loi de la continuité porte que la Nature, ne laisse point de vuide dans l’ordre qu’elle suit.”—Leibnitz, Huv. Philosop., nouv. 
Exssais, 5¢., liv. iii., p. 267. 
t “As I have said, however, most parts, and from which the whole bulk is composed, are either the same or differ in contrarieties according 
to excess or defect.”—Aristotle, History of Animals, Book i., p. 4. 
