CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE MAMMALIA. 
29 
ON THE VARIOUS CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE 
MAMMALIA.* 
BY F. T. MOTT, F.R.G.S. 
Systems of classification may be more or less 
natural, but can never be entirely or com¬ 
pletely so. Nature knows nothing of our 
definitely limited orders, genera, and species. 
The actual plan of the universe is as much 
v misrepresented by these artificial groups as 
the gallop of a horse is misrepresented by an 
instantaneous photograph, which fixes a momentary position 
but gives no idea of the graceful bounding movement as a 
whole. 
A system of classification, as understood at present, 
resembles the instantaneous photograph in attempting to 
paint Nature as a man may see her. But the essence of 
her being is perpetual change, perpetual movement ; and 
a human life is a smaller fraction of a cosmic cycle than 
the hundredth of a second is of the full stride of a galloping 
horse. What presents itself to our eyes, or to the eyes of 
successive individuals for a century, is only a passing phase. 
The phenomena were different yesterday; they will be 
different again to-morrow. Our senses are not delicate enough 
to register the daily change. Even in a hundred years we 
can scarcely recognise that Nature’s hour-hand has moved 
by a hair’s breadth. It seems to us, therefore, as if the 
forms we see around us were fixed and permanent; as if 
each generation precisely resembled its predecessor ; as if 
species, genera, and orders had been created from the 
beginning just as they are, and would go on for ever unless 
extinguished by despotic power. From the days of Aristotle 
until those of Darwin—some 2,200 years—students of Nature 
were content with such views of her as they could get by 
the instantaneous photograph method. Observation, indeed, 
became gradually more complete, comparison and analysis 
more close and searching, but nothing was attempted beyond 
representing things as they appeared; there was scarcely 
any reference to what they had been, or what they would be. 
The most modern systems are just beginning to take into 
account the past and the future, but a complete revolution in 
our ideas of classification is no doubt imminent. It is 
* Transactions of Section D of the Leicester Literary and 
Philosophical Society. Read May ‘21st, 1884. 
