If all the forms of life at present living are the modified offspring of a smaller number of ancestral forms which have died out, and if these again were the modified descendants produced by ordinary parentage of a single original living thing—then the whole series of forms that have _ever_ lived could, if we had them before us, be arranged in the form of a great family-tree—the various branches presenting a perfect gradation of forms arranged one after another, leading down from the terminal twigs (which would represent the latest forms produced) to larger and larger branches, until the common trunk representing the original ancestor would be reached. Our actual means of observing the genealogical affinities of different kinds of animals and plants may be understood by a further use of the metaphor of a genealogical tree in shape like an elm or an oak. Suppose the genealogical tree completely written out—a perfect record—to be sunk in muddy water so that only its topmost branches and twigs are here and there visible—then you have a fair notion of the present condition of the great family of organisms. Only the topmost twigs remain visible, the rest of the great family-tree of living beings is hidden from view, submerged beneath the muddy waters of time. Naturalists have, however, undertaken to reconstruct this great genealogical tree. It is a main object now in the study both of zoology and of botany to find out what are the cousinships, what the exact genetic relationships of all the various species of plants and animals, and so to show, even to the minutest detail, in what particular ways physico-chemical causes have brought about and modified the forms of living things. The task is not quite so difficult as the comparison to a submerged forest-tree would lead one to expect; at the same time it is more difficult than those who have boldly attempted it appear to believe. We have one great help in the carefully worked out systematic classification of animals and plants according to their structure. We are justified in assuming as a general law that animals or plants of like structure have descended from common ancestors—that is to say, that the same kind of organisation (especially where a number of elaborate details of structure are involved) has _not been twice_ produced by natural selection. Thus we are entitled to conclude that _all_ the animals which have a backbone and pharyngeal gill-slits combined—the Vertebrates, as we call them—have descended from a common parent; that all the animals with a muscular foot-like belly and lateral gill filaments, the Molluscs, have also had a common parent, and so on.