Vlll PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 



ciples of that ingenious methodist, and who, wherever he 

 found any disorder, seems to have tried to render it more in- 

 extricable. 



It is also true, that there were very extensive works upon 

 particular classes, which had made known a great number of 

 new species ; but their authors merely considered the exter- 

 nal relations of those species, and no one had employed him- 

 self in arranging the classes and orders from the ensemble of 

 the structure ; the characters of several classes remained false 

 or incomplete even in justly celebrated works of anatomy; 

 ^ome of the orders were arbitrary, and in scarcely any of these 

 divisions were the genera placed conformably to nature. 



I was compelled then, and the task occupied a considerable 

 period of time, I was compelled to make anatomy and zoology, 

 dissection and classification, the pioneers of my steps ; to search 

 for better principles of distribution in my first remarks on or- 

 ganization to employ them in order to arrive at new ones, 

 and to render the distribution perfect in fine, from this mu- 

 tual reaction of the two sciences, to elicit a system of zoology 

 that might serve as an introduction and a guide in anatomical 

 investigations, and as a body of anatomical doctrine fitted to 

 develope and explain the zoological system. 



The first results of this double labour appeared in 1795 in 

 a special memoir upon a new division of the white blooded 

 animals. A sketch of their application to genera and to their 

 division in subgenera was the object of my elementary " Ta- 

 bleau Elementaire des Animaux," printed in 1798, which, in 

 conjunction with M. Dumeril, I improved, in the tables an- 

 nexed to the first volumes of my " Legons d' Anatomic Com- 

 paree" in 1800. 



I should, perhaps, have contented myself with perfecting 

 these tables, and proceeded immediately to the publication of 

 my great work on anatomy, if, in the course of my researches, 

 I had not been frequently struck with another defect of the 

 greater number of the general or partial systems of zoology; I 

 mean the confusion in which the v\^ant of critical acumen has 

 left a great number of species, and even several genera. 



