By this rule we get a definite meaning for the phrase ’important or fundamental attribute’ as determining organic classes; namely, most ancient, or ‘best serving to indicate community of origin.’  Grades of classification will be determined by such fundamental characters, and may correspond approximately to the more general types (now extinct) from which existing animals have descended.

(2) By the hypothesis of development the fixity of species is discredited.  The lowest grade of a classification is made up not of well-defined types unchanging from age to age, but of temporary species, often connected by uncertain and indistinct varieties:  some of which may, in turn, if the conditions of their existence alter, undergo such changes as to produce new species.  Hence the notion that Kinds exist in organic nature must be greatly modified.  During a given period of a few thousand years, Kinds may be recognised, because, under such conditions as now prevail in the world, that period of time is insufficient to bring about great changes.  But, if it be true that lions, tigers, and leopards have had a common ancestor, from whose type they have gradually diverged, it is plain that their present distinctness results only from the death of intermediate specimens and the destruction of intermediate varieties.  Were it possible to restore, by the evidence of fossils, all the ranks of the great processions that have descended from the common ancestor, there would nowhere occur a greater difference than between offspring and parents; and the appearance of Kinds existing in nature, which is so striking in a museum or zoological garden, would entirely vanish.

A classification, then, as formerly observed, represents a cross-section of nature as developing in time:  could we begin at the beginning and follow this development down the course of time, we should find no classes, but an ever-moving, changing, spreading, branching continuum.  It may be represented thus:  Suppose an animal (or plant) A, extending over a certain geographical area, subject to different influences and conditions of climate, food, hill and plain, wood and prairie, enemies and rivals, and undergoing modifications here and there in adaptation to the varying conditions of life:  then varieties appear.  These varieties, diverging more and more, become distinct species (AB, AC, AD, AX).  Some of these species, the more widely diffused, again produce varieties; which, in turn become species (ABE, ABF, ADG, ADH).  From these, again, ABE, ABFI, ABFJ, AC, ADHK, ADHL, ADHM, the extant species, descend.

A
/|\\_
/ | \ \__
/  |  \   \_____
________/   |   \__      \
/            |      \      \
AB            AC     AD     AX
/\            |      /\
/  \           |     /  \
/    \          |    /    \
ABE    ABF        |  ADG    ADH
/      / \        |         /|\
/      /   \       |        / | \
/      /     \      |       /  |  \
ABE   ABFI    ABFJ   AC   ADHK ADHL ADHM