ants of A or of
I have been so much modified as to have more or less completely lost
traces of their parentage, in this case, their places in a natural
classification will have been more or less completely lost,--as
sometimes seems to have occurred with existing organisms. All the
descendants of the genus F, along its whole line of descent, are
supposed to have been but little modified, and they yet form a single
genus. But this genus, though much isolated, will still occupy its
proper intermediate position; for F originally was intermediate in
character between A and I, and the several genera descended from these
two genera will have inherited to a certain extent their characters.
This natural arrangement is shown, as far as is possible on paper, in
the diagram, but in much too simple a manner. If a branching diagram had
not been used, and only the names of the groups had been written in a
linear series, it would have been still less possible to have given a
natural arrangement; and it is notoriously not possible to represent in
a series, on a flat surface, the affinities which we discover in nature
amongst the beings of the same group. Thus, on the view which I hold,
the natural system is genealogical in its arrangement, like a pedigree;
but the degrees of modification which the different groups have
undergone, have to be expressed by ranking them under different
so-called genera, sub-families, families, sections, orders, and classes.

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by
taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of
mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the
best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the
world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly
changing dialects, had to be included, such an arrangement would, I
think, be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some very ancient
language had altered little, and had given rise to few new languages,
whilst others (owing to the spreading and subsequent isolation and
states of civilisation of the several races, descended from a common
race) had altered much, and had given rise to many new languages and
dialects. The various degrees of difference in the languages from the
same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to
groups; but the proper or even only possible arrangement would still be
genealogical; and this would be