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Updated: June 23, 2025


At that ancient epoch not only were the vertebrate, molluscous, and arthropod types distinctly and clearly differentiated, but highly developed forms had been produced in each of these sub-kingdoms. But Professor Huxley has kindly informed me that he has discovered a jugular fish in the Permian deposits.

Animals and plants are divided into groups, which become gradually smaller, beginning with a KINGDOM, which is divided into SUB-KINGDOMS; then come the smaller divisions called PROVINCES; and so on from a PROVINCE to a CLASS from a CLASS to an ORDER, from ORDERS to FAMILIES, and from these to GENERA, until we come at length to the smallest groups of animals which can be defined one from the other by constant characters, which are not sexual; and these are what naturalists call SPECIES in practice, whatever they may do in theory.

I mentioned that the whole of the animal kingdom is divisible into five sub-kingdoms; that each of these sub-kingdoms is again divisible into provinces; that each province may be divided into classes, and the classes into the successively smaller groups, orders, families, genera, and species.

When, however, we come to the Arthropoda and Vertebrata, even to the lowest classes in these two great Sub-Kingdoms, sexual selection has effected much. In the several great classes of the animal kingdom, in mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, and even crustaceans, the differences between the sexes follow nearly the same rules.

The multitudinous kinds of animals and plants, both recent and fossil, are, as is well known, arranged by zoologists and botanists, in accordance with their natural relations, into groups which receive the names of sub-kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera and species.

Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the comparative height and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms, and the five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrata in the one case, and the mammalia in the other.

Take, again, one of these sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five classes, the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each of the other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible.

But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom 'Vertebrata', because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms.

The great Northern Pictland was divided into seven provinces, or sub-kingdoms, while there was an over-King, or Ardrigh, with his capital at Inverness and, later, in Angus or Forfarshire. The country about Edinburgh was partly English, partly Cymric or Welsh. The south-west corner, Galloway, was called Pictish, and was peopled by Gaelic-speaking tribes.

If you looked closely, you would notice, in the first place, a great many things very like animals with which you are acquainted now: you would see differences of shape and proportion, but on the whole a close similarity. I explained what I meant by ORDERS the other day, when I described the animal kingdom as being divided in sub-kingdoms, classes and orders.

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