Orders, Families

Orders

This is the main divisions which initially divide a class.

If these divisions promote a method for creating others by subdividing them, these subdivisions are no longer orders. It would be very inconvenient to give them that name.

For example, the class of mollusks makes it easy to establish among these animals 2 large main divisions:

1. The ones having a head, eyes, and so on and reproducing by coupling.
2. The others are headless, eyeless, and so on, and do not undergo coupling in reproduction.

The cephalid mollusks and the acephalid mollusks must therefore be considered the 2 orders of this class.

However, each these orders can be divided into sections.

These sections are just sections just as some large families are themselves further sub-divided.

I preserve in the artistic part the simplicity and hierarchy established by Linnaeus.

If we need to sub-divide the orders (i.e., the main divisions of a class), let us make these sub-division as many as necessary without giving them special designations.

The orders which divide a class must be determined by important characteristics which extend to all the things constituting each order.

But we must not assign to them a special name applicable to the objects themselves.

The same thing must take place with regard to the sections which necessity requires one to make in the orders of a single class.

Families

This is to the parts of the natural order recognized in one or another of the kingdoms of living things.

These parts of the natural order are:

• not as large as the classes and even of the orders
• larger than the genera

All the genera which they include are grouped by their true similarities.

• The limits around these families are always artificial.

Thus, there will be constant variations in the limits of families.

• Some naturalists divide a family into several new families
• Some combine several families into a single one
• Some make even more additions to an already known family, enlarging it, pushing back its limits

The classes, orders, sections, and genera would be families of different sizes if:

• all the races (what are called the species) under a kingdom were perfectly known
• the true interconnections between each of these races and groups were understood

Then all these sections would be large or small parts of the natural order.

It is very difficult to assign limits to separate these different sections.

Arbitrary designations would make them vary constantly.

Fortunately, there are so many animal and plant races still unknown to us.

Usage and necessity demand that we assign to each family as to each genre a name applicable to the objects in it.