Thousands of years ago, people began to recognize that there were different groups of
living things in the world. Some animals had claws and sharp teeth and roamed on the land.
Others had feathers and beaks and flew in the air. Still others had scales and fins and swam
in the water. People also made observations about plants. Not only did plants vary in shape, size,
and color, but some were good to eat while others were poisonous.
Without knowing exactly what they were doing, people developed simple classification
systems to group living things according to similar characteristics. In the fourth century B.C., the
Greek philosopher Aristotle first proposed a system to classify life. He placed the animal into three
groups. One group included all animals that flew, another group included those that swam, and a
third group included those that walked. Aristotle classified animals according to the way they
moved. Although this system was useful, it caused problems. According to Aristotle, both a bird and
a bat would fall into the same flying group. Yet in some basic respects, birds and bats are very
different. Birds, for example, are covered with hair. Although the system devised by Aristotle would
not satisfy today’s taxonomists, it was the first attempt to develop a scientific and orderly system
of classification. Aristotle’s classification system was used for almost 2,000 years.
In the seventeenth century, John Ray, an English biologist, based his system of classification on
the internal anatomy of plants and animals. He examined how they behaved and what they looked
like. He was the first person to scientifically use the term species.
【題組】24. What is the best title for this passage?
(A) The Beginning of Classification (B) Plants and Animals
(C) The Greek Philosopher (D) Biologists and his Friends
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