A writer of history might
consider the political growth, the wars, and the religion of a nation and
omit its domestic life and educational progress, especially if these did
not greatly influence the result that he wishes to make plain. If we
wished to explain the plan of the organization of a high school, it would
be satisfactory to divide the pupils into freshmen, sophomores, juniors,
and seniors, even though, in any particular school, there might be a few
special and irregular pupils who belonged to none of these classes.
An exposition of the use of hammers would omit many occasional and
unimportant uses. Such a classification though exact is incomplete and is
called _partition_.
EXERCISES
_A._ Can you tell which of the following are classifications? Which are
partitions? Which are defective?
1. The inhabitants of the United States are Americans, Indians, and
negroes.
2. Lines are straight, curved, and crooked.
3. Literature is composed of prose, poetry, and fiction.
4. The political parties in the last campaign were Republican and
Democrat.
5. The United States Government has control of states and territories
6. Plants are divided into two groups: (1) the phanerogams, or flowering
plants, and (2) cryptogams, or flowerless plants.
7. All phanerogamous plants consist of (1) root and (2) shoot; the shoot
consisting of (_a_) stem and (_b_) leaf. It is true that some exceptional
plants, in maturity, lack leaves, or lack root.
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