cientific and common language will come into accordance. In
short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those
naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial
combinations {486} made for convenience. This may not be a cheering
prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the
undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species.

The other and more general departments of natural history will rise greatly
in interest. The terms used by naturalists of affinity, relationship,
community of type, paternity, morphology, adaptive characters, rudimentary
and aborted organs, &c., will cease to be metaphorical, and will have a
plain signification. When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage
looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we
regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we
contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many
contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when
we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour,
the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when
we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from
experience, will the study of natural history become!

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes
and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and
disuse, on the direct action of external conditions, and so forth. The
study of domestic productions will rise immensely in value. A new variety
raised by man will be a more important and interesting subject for study
than one more species added to the infinitude of already recorded species.
Our classifications will come to be, as far as they can be so made,
genealogies; and will then truly give what may be called the plan of
creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we
have a definite object in view. We possess no {487} pedigrees or armorial
bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of
descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have
long been inherited. Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect
to the nature of long-lost structures. Species and groups of species, which
are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils,
will aid us in forming a pi