The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
Like the modern classification of plants, the modern classification of
animals shows us the assumed linear order completely broken up. In his
lectures at the Royal Institution, in 1857, Prof. Huxley expressed the
relations existing among the several great groups of the animal kingdom, by
placing them at the ends of four or five radii, diverging from a centre.
The diagram I cannot obtain; but in the published reports of his lectures
at the School of Mines the groups were arranged as on the following page.
What remnant there may seem to be of linear succession in some of the
sub-groups contained in it, is merely an accident of typographical
convenience. Each of them is to be regarded simply as a cluster. And if
Prof. Huxley had further developed the arrangement, by dispersing the
sub-groups and sub-sub-groups on the same principle, there would result an
arrangement perhaps not much unlike that shown on the page succeeding this.
VERTEBRATA
(_Abranchiata_)
Mammalia
Aves
Reptilia
(_Branchiata_)
Amphibia
Pisces.
MOLLUSCA ANNULOSA
Cephalopoda Heteropoda } _Articulata._
Gasteropoda-dioecia } Insecta Arachnida
} Myriapoda Crustacea
{ Pulmonata Gasteropoda-monoecia
{ Pteropoda _Annuloida._
Lamellibranchiata Annellata Scoleidæ
Echinodermata Trematoda
Rotifera Tæniadæ
Turbellaria
Nematoidea
COELENTERATA
Hydrozoa Actinozoa.
PROTOZOA
Infusoria Spongiadæ Gregarinidæ
_Noctilucidæ_ Foraminifera _Thallassicollidæ_
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