The importance, for classification, of trifling characters, mainly depends
on their being correlated with many other characters of more or less
importance. The value indeed of an aggregate of characters is very evident
in natural history. Hence, as has often been remarked, a species may
depart from its allies in several characters, both of high physiological
importance, and of almost universal prevalence, and yet leave us in no
doubt where it should be ranked. Hence, also, it has been found that a
classification founded on any single character, however important that may
be, has always failed; for no part of the organisation is invariably
constant. The importance of an aggregate of characters, even when none are
important, alone explains the aphorism enunciated by Linnaeus, namely, that
the characters do not give the genus, but the genus gives the character;
for this seems founded on the appreciation of many trifling points of
resemblance, too slight to be defined. Certain plants, belonging to the
Malpighiaceae, bear perfect and degraded flowers; in the latter, as A. de
Jussieu has remarked, "The greater number of the characters proper to the
species, to the genus, to the family, to the class, disappear, and thus
laugh at our classification." When Aspicarpa produced in France, during
several years, only these degraded flowers, departing so wonderfully in a
number of the most important points of structure from the proper type of
the order, yet M.
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