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.