Introduction to the catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum.

  • Duncan, John Shute, 1769-1844.
Date:
[1826]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introduction to the catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    these divisions being less easily defined, their diver- sities and similitudes may be more conveniently pointed out, to characterize subdivisions. Aristotle, after an extensive enumeration of those similitudes of animals which lead us to pronounce them to belong to the same species and the same genus, concludes his sixth section or chapter by com- plaining of a difficulty arising clearly from the im- perfect state of the science, namely, the want of good general names: Tov yevovg tu>v TeTpaird^uv %wuv Kai ^cootokcov ei%7 y.ev Icttl noWa, dvmvfxa —$10 kou ywp'ig XafxfidvovTag dvdyKV] Oeupetv eKoiarov tyjv (f>vaiv avTcav. Modern naturalists have divided vertebrated and invertebrated animals into various subdivisions, call- ed classes, orders, families, genera, and species. In a successive view of the fewest similitudes ex- tending over the greatest number of objects, a divi- sion of animals into pulmonary and impulmonary, with and without lungs, should follow that of ver- tebrate and invertebrate, as the term pulmonaria ex- tends to mammalia, aves, and amphibia; and impul- monaria includes pisces, insecta, and vermes. Verte- brata is manifestly a more extensive division than pulmonaria, as it includes pisces. The division in- vertebrata is more complete than that of impulmo- naria, which in fact includes two such clearly dis- tinct conditions of organs adapted to the reception of air into the animal system, that the positive dif- ference is more striking than the negative similitude. There is, besides, a second agreement in the impul- monaria, namely, the absence of red colour from the blood. Pulmonaria may in regular sequence be sub- divided into two subdivisions : animals having lungs with warm red blood, calidisanguia, and animals with