18 Cuvier's Biographical Memoir of M, de Lamarck. 



tertiperature for each day ; but it may be said that the weather 

 took pleasure in exposing his fallacies. In vain did he attempt 

 every year to introduce some new consideration, such as the 

 phases, the apogee and perigee of the moon, and the relative 

 position of the sun ; in vain did he seek thereby to explain his 

 false reckonings, and to rectify his calculations. The very suc- 

 ceeding season taught him, to his disappointment, that our at- 

 mosphere is subjected to influences far too complicated for man- 

 kind to calculate upon its phenomena. At last he renounced 

 this fruitless labour, and, returning to that which he ought never 

 to have neglected, occupied himself with the direct object of his 

 professorship, — the history of invertebrate animals, — in which 

 he at last found an indisputable source of reputation, and a last- 

 ing title to the gratitude of posterity. It is to him that we are 

 indebted for the above name, invertebrate animals, which ex- 

 presses perhaps the only circumstance in their organization 

 which is common to them all. He was the first to use it in pre- 

 ference to that of white-blooded animals, hitherto employed ; 

 and the accuracy of his views was not long in being confirmed 

 by observations, which prove that an entire class of these ani- 

 mals possess red blood. A new classification, founded on their 

 anatomy, had been published in 1795 ; this he in a great mea- 

 sure adopted in 1797,* and substituted it in the room of those 

 of Linnaeus and Bruguiere, which at first formed the base of 

 his course. After that period, he modified it in various ways, 

 but without entirely changing it.-f- His anatomical knowledge 



• See the table inserted at the 314th page of his Meraoires de Physique 

 et d'Histoire Xaturelle, and the subjoined note, the onlj testimony he has 

 left of the source whence he derived it. This table differs from the arrange- 

 ment in question, only in establishing a class of radiarii which cannot be main- 

 tained, and in leaving the Crustacea with insects, a union which he afterwards 

 regarded as improper. 



+ In his system of Animaux sans Vertebres, in 1810,^ he adopted the class 

 of Crustacea, and created that of Arachnides, in consequence of some obser- 

 vations which had been communicated to him on the heart and pulmonary 



^ System of Invertebrate Animals, or general table of the classes, orders, and ge- 

 nera, of these animals ; presenting their essential characters, and their distribution ac- 

 cording to their natural relations and organization, after the mode of arrangement 

 adopted with preserved specimens in the galleries of the Museum of Natural History ; 

 preceded by a Discourse delivered at the opening of the Zoological Course in the Mu- 

 seum, year viii. of the Republic. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris, year IX. 



