individuals together which agree in this one respect. In Botany the artificial method classes plants according to the organs of reproduction; but this has been found so very imperfect that it has been abandoned, and the natural method has been substituted, according to which the whole structure of the plant determines its place. If flying were taken as the artificial basis for the grouping of some animals, we should find insects and birds, bats and flying squirrels, grouped together; but the natural method, taking into consideration not one character, but all the essential characters, finds that insects, birds, and bats differ profoundly in their organization: the insect has wings, but its wings are not formed like those of the bird, nor are those of the bird formed like those of the bat. The insect does not breathe by lungs, like the bird and the bat; it has no internal skeleton, like the bird and the bat; and the bird, although it has many points in common with the bat, does not, like it, suckle its young; and thus we may run over the characters of each organization, and find that the three animals belong to widely different groups.
It is to Linnæus that we are indebted for the most ingenious and comprehensive of the many schemes invented for the cataloguing of animal forms; and modern attempts at classification are only improvements on the plan he laid down. First we may notice his admirable invention of the double names. It had been the custom to designate plants and animals according to some name common to a large group, to which was added a description more or less characteristic. An idea may be formed of the necessity of a reform, by conceiving what a laborious and uncertain process it would be if our friends spoke to us of having seen a dog in the garden, and on our asking what kind of dog, instead of their saying "a terrier, a bull-terrier, or a skye-terrier," they were to attempt a description of the dog. Something of this kind was the labour of understanding the nature of an animal from the vague description of it given by naturalists. Linnæus rebaptized the whole animal kingdom upon one intelligible principle. He continued to employ the name common to each group, such as that of Felis for the cats, which became the generic name; and in lieu of the description which was given of each different kind, to indicate that it was a lion, a tiger, a leopard, or a domestic cat, he affixed a specific name: thus the animal bearing the description of a lion became Felis leo; the tiger, Felis tigris; the leopard, Felis leopardus; and our domestic friend, Felis catus. These double names, as Vogt remarks, are like the Christian- and sur-names by which we distinguish the various members of one family; and instead of speaking of Tomkinson with the flabby face, and Tomkinson with the square forehead, we simply say John and William Tomkinson.
Linnæus did more than this. He not only fixed definite conceptions of Species and Genera, but introduced those of Orders and Classes. Cuvier added Families to Genera, and Sub-kingdoms (embranchements) to Classes. Thus a scheme was elaborated by which the whole animal kingdom was arranged in subordinate groups: the sub-kingdoms were divided into classes,
