At the same time, for this investigation, the study of insects is peculiarly suitable; not only on account of the small size, ease of collecting, and little cost of preserving the specimens, but because from their varied mode of life in different stages of development, and perhaps for other reasons, the species are less likely to be destroyed in the progress of geological changes.[1] Cataclysms and submergences, which would annihilate the higher animals, would only float the temporarily asphyxiated insect, or the tree-trunks containing the larvæ and pupæ, to other neighboring lands. However that may be, I have given you some grounds for believing that many of the species of insects now living existed in the same form before the appearance of any living genera of mammals, and we may suppose that their unchanged descendants will probably survive the present mammalian fauna, including our own race.
I may add, moreover, that some groups, especially in the Rhynchophora, which, as I have said above, I believe to be the earliest introduced of the Coleoptera, exhibit with compact and definite limits, and clearly-defined specific characters, so many generic modifications, that I am compelled to think that we have in them an example of the long-sought, unbroken series, extending in this instance from early mesozoic to the present time, and of which very few forms have become extinct.
I have used the word species so often, that you will doubtless be inclined to ask, What, then, is understood by a species? Alas! I can tell you no more than has been told recently by many others. It is an assemblage of individuals, which differ from each other by very small or trifling and inconstant characters, of much less value than those in which they differ from any other assemblage of individuals. Who determines the value of these characters? The experienced student of that department to which the objects belong. Species are, therefore, those groups of individuals representing organic forms which are recognized as such by those who from natural power and education are best qualified to judge.
You perceive, therefore, that we are here dealing with an entirely different kind of information from that which we gain from the physical sciences; every thing there depends on accurate observation, with strict logical consequences derived therefrom. Here the basis of our knowledge depends equally on accurate and trained observation, but the logic is not formal but perceptive.
This has been already thoroughly recognized by Huxley[2] and
- ↑ For a fuller discussion of these causes, and of several other subjects which are briefly mentioned in this address, the reader may consult an excellent memoir by my learned friend Mr. Andrew Murray, "On the Geographical Relations of the Chief Coleopterous Faunæ."—(Journal of Linnæan Society, Zoölogy, vol. xi.)
- ↑ "A species is the smallest group to which distinctive and invariable characters can be assigned." ("Principles and Methods of Paleontology," Smithsonian Report, 1869, p. 378.)
