Abstract
I.
CLASSIFICATION is a natural propensity of the human mind. If our attention finds itself directed to a large number of objects, about which we desire to inform ourselves, a desire to economise our labour, or even render it possible, at once leads us to endeavour to throw the assemblage into subordinate groups. The result, and indeed end, of this process is to enable us to frame general statements about these groups which cover all the things comprised within them. In the case of a naturalist it is desirable that the groups should be so constituted as to admit of as many general "statements as possible being made with regard to them; and in proportion as our classification allows us to do this successfully, we say it is a natural one-one conformable to the order of nature-and such as nature herself would indicate if the task were assigned to her rather than undertaken by us.
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DYER, W. On the Classification of The Vegetable Kingdom 1 . Nature 14, 293–295 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014293a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014293a0