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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



Having devoted myself from my earliest youth to the stu- 

 dy of comparative anatomy, that is to the laws of the or- 

 ganization of animals and of the modijfications this organiza- 

 tion undergoes in the various species, and havings for nearly 

 thirty years since, consecrated to that science every moment 

 of which my duties allowed me to dispose, the constant aim of 

 my labours has been to reduce it to general rules, and to pro- 

 positions which may contain their most simple expression. 

 My first essays soon made me perceive, that I could only 

 attain this in proportion as the animals, whose structure I 

 should have to elucidate, were arranged in conformity with 

 that structure, so that in one single name of class, order, genus, 

 &c. might be embraced all those species which, in their ex- 

 ternal as well as internal conformation, have affinities either 

 more general or particular. Now this is what the greater 

 number of naturalists of that epoch had never attempted, and 

 what but few of them could have effected, had they even 

 been willing to try, since a similar arrangement presupposes 

 an extensive knowledge of the structures, of which it is partly 

 the representation. 



It is true, that Daubenton and Camper had given facts, 

 that Pallas had indicated views : but the ideas of these learned 

 men had not yet exercised upon their contemporaries the in- 

 fluence they merited. The only general catalogue of animals 

 then in existence, and the only one we possess even now^, the 

 system of Linnseus, had just been disfigured by an unfortunate 

 editor, who did not even take the pains to examine the prin- 



