306 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



zoologists, in order to detect the methods by which real 

 progress is made in our science. 



Since the publication of the " Systema Natures," up to 

 the time when Cuvier published the results of his ana- 

 tomical investigations, all the attempts at new classifica- 

 tions were, after all, only modifications of the principles 

 introduced by Linnseus in the systematic arrangement of 

 animals. Even his opponents laboured under the influ- 

 ence of his master spirit, and a critical comparison of the 

 various systems which were proposed for the arrangement 

 of single classes, or of the whole animal kingdom, shows 

 that they were framed according to the same principles, 

 namely, under the impression that animals were to be 

 arranged together into classes, orders, genera, and species, 

 according; to their more or less close external resemblance. 



o 



No sooner, however, had Cuvier presented to the scientific 

 world his extensive researches into the internal structure 

 of the whole animal kingdom, than naturalists vied with 

 one another in their attempts to remodel the whole classi- 

 fication of animals, establishing new classes, new orders, 

 new genera, describing new species, and introducing all 

 manner of intermediate divisions and subdivisions, under 

 the name of families, tribes, sections, etc. Foremost in 

 these attempts was Cuvier himself, and next to him 

 Lamarck. It has, however, often happened that the divi- 

 sions introduced by the latter under new names were 

 only translations into a more systematic form of the re- 

 sults Cuvier had himself obtained from Ins dissections, 

 and pointed out in his " Leyons sur 1'anatomie comparee" 

 as natural divisions, but without giving them distinct 

 names. Cuvier himself beautifully expresses the influence 

 which his anatomical investigations had upon Zoology, 

 and how the improvements in classification have contri- 



