ce which we purpose to undertake in the following pages.

It may be safely assumed that our readers have a general conception of
the nature of the objects to which the word "species" is applied; but
it has, perhaps, occurred to a few, even to those who are naturalists ex
professo, to reflect, that, as commonly employed, the term has a double
sense and denotes two very different orders of relations. When we call a
group of animals, or of plants, a species, we may imply thereby, either
that all these animals or plants have some common peculiarity of form
or structure; or, we may mean that they possess some common functional
character. That part of biological science which deals with form
and structure is called Morphology--that which concerns itself with
function, Physiology--so that we may conveniently speak of these two
senses, or aspects, of "species"--the one as morphological, the other
as physiological. Regarded from the former point of view, a species
is nothing more than a kind of animal or plant, which is distinctly
definable from all others, by certain constant, and not merely sexual,
morphological peculiarities. Thus horses form a species, because the
group of animals to which that name is applied is distinguished from all
others in the world by the following constantly associated characters.
They have--1, A vertebral column; 2, Mammae; 3, A placental embryo; 4,
Four legs; 5, A single well-developed toe in each foot provided with a
hoof; 6, A bushy tail; and 7, Callosities on the inner sides of both
the fore and the hind legs. The asses, again, form a distinct species,
because, with the same characters, as far as the fifth in the above
list, all asses have tufted tails, and have callosities only on the
inner side of the fore-legs. If animals were discovered having the
general characters of the horse, but sometimes with callosities only
on the fore-legs, and more or less tufted tails; or animals having the
general characters of the ass, but with more or less bushy tails,
and sometimes with callosities on both pairs of legs, besides being
intermediate in other respects--the two species would have to be merged
into one. They could no longer be regarded as morphologically distinct
species, for they would not be distinctly definable one from the other.

However bare and simple this definition of species may appear to be,
we confidently appeal to all practical naturalists, whether zoologists,
botanists, or palaeontolo