CONCLUSIONS.

283

in introducing any one of these groups into our systemswithout showing : 1st, that it is a natural group; 2nd,that it is a group of this or that kind, so as to avoid hence-forth calling groups that may he genera, families; groupsthat may he orders, families; groups that may be ordersor classes, classes or branches respectively; 3rd, that thecharacters by which these groups may be recognized arein fact respectively specific, generic, family, ordinal, classic,or typical characters, so that our works may no longerexhibit the annoying confusion, which is to be met almosteverywhere, of generic characters in the diagnoses of spe-cies, or of family and ordinal characters in the character-istics of classes and branches. 1

It may, perhaps, be said that all this will not renderthe study of Zoology more easy. I do not expect that itwill; but if an attentive consideration of what I havestated in the preceding pages respecting classificationshould lead to a more accurate investigation of all thedifferent relations existing among animals, and betweenthem and the world in which they live, I shall considermyself as having fully succeeded in the object I have hadin view from the beginning, in this inquiry. Moreover,it is high time that certain zoologists, who wmuld callthemselves investigators, should remember, that naturalobjects, to be fully understood, require more than a pass-ing glance ; 2 they should imitate the example of astrono-

1 As I do not wish to be personal,I will refrain from quoting examplesto justify this assertion. I wouldonly request those who care to beaccurate, to examine critically almostany description of species, any cha-racterization of genera, of families,of orders, of classes, or of types, tosatisfy themselves that characters ofthe same kind are introduced almost

indiscriminately to distinguish allthese groups.

2 The mere indication of the exist-ence of a species is a poor additionto our knowledge, when compared tothose monographs in which eitherthe structure or the development ofa single animal is fully illustrated;such as Lyonnet’s Anatomy of theCossus, Bojanus ’ Anatomy of the