Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/274

270 families of terrestialterrestrial [sic] beasts of prey constitute the suborder fissipedia. These, in turn, are grouped with the marine beasts of prey, such as seals, sea Hons, walruses (suborder pinnipedia) to form the mammalian order, carnivora. Several other orders of animals with many characteristics in common are combined to form the class mammalia, which is one of several classes belonging to the subphylum vertebrata, a branch of the phylum chordata. A phylum is one of the grand subdivisions of the animals combined to form the class mammalia, with the same fundamental plan of organization, the common features of which are believed to be derived from a common ancestral type.

The underlying assumption of classification is the same that underlies comparative anatomy; that degrees of resemblance run parallel with degrees of blood relationship, that the most nearly identical individuals are most closely related and that those that bear the least fundamental resemblance to each other are either not genetically related at all or else had a common ancestor far back in the misty past when animal life was in process of origin. We have already shown that this assumption holds good in all cases where it has been possible to put it to the test. No further justification need be offered in this place for making use of the only adequate instrument of classification: the principle of homology.

The species is the unit of classification, but there is serious doubt as to whether species have any reality outside of the minds of taxonomists. Certainly it is extremely difficult, if at all possible, exactly to draw sharp boundary lines between closely similar species. When we examine a large number of individuals belonging to a given species we find that there are no two exactly alike in all respects. As a rule there is a wide range of diversity within the limits of the group we call a species and the extreme variants are often so unlike the type form that, were it not for the intergrading stops between them, they would often be adjudged distinct species. Moreover, the species of a prosperous genus are so variable that it becomes an almost impossible task to determine where one species ends and another begins, so closely do they intergrade one into another. A species, then, is not a fixed and definite assemblage such as one would expect it to be if specially created as an immutable thing. On the contrary, intensive study of any widely distributed species gives the impression of an intricate network of interrelated individuals changing in a great variety of ways.

The completed classification of any large group, such as the vertebrates, presents itself as an elaborately branching system whose resemblance to a tree is unmistakable. The phylum branches into subphyla, some of the latter into several classes, classes into orders, orders into families, families into genera, genera into species, species into varieties. We may compare the phylum to one of the main branches coming off from the trunk, while the varieties may be thought of as the terminal twigs. This treelike arrangement is exactly what one would expect to find in a group descended from a common ancestry and modified along many different lines. It is in reality a genealogical tree. If this striking arrangement is a part of the plan of special creation it is indeed strangely unfortunate that it speaks so plainly of descent with modification.

There is no greater difficulty in connection with the classification of man than in that of any other living species. Indeed there are scores, even hundreds, of species whose exact affinities with other groups are far less obvious than those of the human species. Anatomically the genus homo bears a striking resemblance to the anthropoid apes. Bone for bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, and in