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Sonic iiUroduclory
remarks.
CHAPTER II.
Contributions to our knowledge of the natural system
of the Ostracods.
During the course of tlie last Century zoological classification has, as we know, — like
the biological sciences in general — shown an enormous advance. The cause of this is probably
to be found especially in the way in which the idea of evolution has asserted itself in biology.
The purely descriptive classification, whose main — and in many cases only — object was to try
to get an arrangement and summary of the multitude of forms belonging to organic life, has
given way to deeper and more scientific efforts. Natural scientists have laid down as their
object an attempt to establish, by means of comparison, the laws of the phenomena in the
animal and vegetable kingdoms and an attempt to arrive at an understanding of these
phenomena by means of exact methods and experiments.
It is true that even C. v. LINNÉ spoke about ,,natural“ and „artificial“ systems, but
it was only after the theory of evolution was put forth that the idea arose that a real
consan-guinity existed between the different systematic categories. The motto was formulated that
„the degree of resemblance is a measure of consanguinity ; the greater the resemblance is, the
doser are the genealogical bonds, the greater the difference becomes, the farther away is the
common original form“.
During the first decades after Darvmn’s epoch-making work „0 n the Origin of
Species“, 1859, the main interest of zoologists was directed to comparative morphology
and embryology; they tried to obtain from these departments of study facts that might explain
the genetic position of the different grovips of animais. But it was the great increase of interest
in the field of theoretical spéculation as to evolution that probably left the greatest impression
on this period of investigation. Both experts and laymen often devoted themselves freely to
far-reaching spéculations, hypothèses wore often eonstructed on hypothèses, facts were often
made to fit in with hypothèses previously arrived at. During this time the „pedigree“ of the
animal world was eonstructed and the hypothetica! original forms of the different groups were
re-constructed.
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