In this tree, while there is a general advance in organization from below upwards, there are many deviations in this respect. Some leaves may be growing on different branches at the same level, which means that species belonging to widely divergent classes or orders may still possess an equal grade of organization. On the same branch there may be growing leaves at different levels. This means that one species may be more highly organized than another belonging to the same class. Not only may all living species be classified in the form of a family tree, but all the extinct hosts of species that lived in the ages of the past may be similarly classified. _If all the animals that have ever lived on the globe should be represented by a tree, those existing on the earth to-day would be indicated by the topmost twigs and leaves, while the extinct forms would be represented by the trunk and main branches._ (Vid. Diagram of Development.) The detecting of this tree-like arrangement of species in nature is the progressive work of naturalists for centuries past. At about the commencement of the present century, when it was finally detected, naturalists were unable to understand the significance of it. They did not perceive the underlying principle that accounts for the fact that groups of living forms have such natural affinities that they are arranged like a family tree. When Darwin came upon the scene and found that his predecessors had already empirically worked out the tree-like system of classification, he convinced naturalists that the great underlying principle of this system was =Heredity=; and that, therefore, the grouping of living and extinct organisms in a family tree according to their natural affinities is a grouping based upon genetic affinities; and further that the ultimate meaning of classification is the tracing of lines of pedigree. This signifies that all the creatures living on the globe to-day, and all the hosts that lived in the ages of the past, are blood relations in greater or less degree, and that they have all been evolved from simple microscopic creatures that appeared on the globe at the dawn of life. All organisms, then, have undergone an evolution. The factors of fundamental importance in the study of the theory of =Evolution=, or the doctrine of the Transmutations of Organisms, are =Cells=, =Heredity= and =Variation=, =Environment=, =Natural Selection=, and =Isolation=. _The evolution of an organism means its descent from preceding organisms with continuous adaptation to its Environment. Its adaptation occurs chiefly, if not entirely, through the Natural Selection of its useful Variations, and the tending of these variations to be transmitted to the offspring by the forces of Heredity. The summation of the variations, by Heredity and Isolation, leads ultimately to specific, generic, ordinal, and other differences in the descendants; leads, in other words, to the transmutations of organisms._