The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 63: May to October, 1903 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 63: May to October, 1903

A perfect taxonomy is one which would perfectly express all the facts in the evolution and development of the various forms. It would be based on morphology, the consideration of structure and form inde pendent of adaptive, or physiological, or environmental modifications. It would regard those characters as most important which had existed longest unchanged in the history of the species or type, thus consider ing all knowledge derived from paleontology. It would regard as of minor importance those traits which had risen recently in response to natural selection or to the forced alteration through pressure of environ ment, while fundamental alterations as they appear one after another in geologic time would make the basal characters of corresponding groups in taxonomy. In greater or less degree, the life history of the individual, through the Operation of the law of heredity, repeats the actual history of the group to which the individual belongs. For this reason the characters appearing first in the individual are likely to have greatest importance in classification.

In a perfect taxonomy, or natural system of classification, animals would not be divided into groups nor ranged in linear series. We should imagine a series variously and divergently branched, with each group at its earlier or lower end passing insensibly into the main or primitive stock. A very little alteration now and then in some strue ture is epoch-making and paves the way through specialization to a new class or order. But each class or order through its lowest types is inter tangled with some earlier and otherwise diverging group. A sound system of taxonomy of fishes should be an exact reflex of the history of their evolution. But in the limitations of book making, this tran script must be made on a flat page, in linear series, while for centuries and perhaps forever whole chapters must be left vacant and others dotted everywhere with marks of doubt. For science demands that positive assertion should not go where certainty can not follow.

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