RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. Abstract of J. D. Dana on Zoophytes, 1847.  CUL-DAR74.120-121. Edited by John van Wyhe (The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 8.2021, 9.2025. RN2

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volumes CUL-DAR 72-75 contain Darwin's abstracts of scientific books and journals.


[120]

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American Journal of Science (n.s.) vol. III. New Series

p. 337 J. D. Dana on Zoophytes.

"The institution of these various groups (ie classes orders genera &c) is not properly classifying, for the classification is completed, when the branchings & interlinkings of affinities are made out…Genera are convenient artificial sections, based on natural affinities; & very commonly they made almost imperceptibly into one another...It may often have seemed vexatious to the systematist to have had a well characterized family or genus spoiled in its characteristic & exceptions introduced by the discovery of a new species, which blend it with another & previously distinct group"

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p. 340 do. It seems at first a violation of all propriety to arrange together animals having gills & those that have none; those that have a heart, & those that are destitute of even a trace of one, beyond a distinct valve or two in the circulatory system; those that have distinct arteries & those whose arteries are only lacunal passages among the muscles & other organs." … The class Crustacea actually illustrates each of the anomalies just stated. If Amphioxus be a Fish, we may have a vertebrate animal without a brain & without a sense to raise it above a Polyp.

Dana, James Dwight. 1847. On zoöphytes, No. V.; classification of zoöphytes. American Journal of Science and Arts 3 (May): 337-347.


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Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

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