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Classification of the Sci.
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fication is to be possible, something of that description there must be. Our comprehension of such a principle will be imperfect. It will suffice to enable us to begin a sketch of a natural classification, but not to carry it out. Where such comprehension of the origins of the species to be classified abandons us, we can often derive important aid from the doctrine of probabilities, which teaches us how fortuitous, that is, unintended, characters distribute themselves. It will be demonstrated in the chapter on classification that two closely related natural classes are not, in general, separated by sharp lines of demarcation, so that there will be forms any one of which might, as far as the essential characters of those classes serve to discriminate them, belong either to the one or to the other of the two natural classes. But in such cases it will often be found upon investigation that there are other characters, more or less accidental, which may aid

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