346 Cuvier as a Naturalist. 



in which he established, in the most logical manner, the mode of 

 respiration by tracheae, and of absorption by imbibition — pecu- 

 liarities occasioned by their want of circulation. This memoir 

 subsequently led to the separation of insects from other articu- 

 lated animals. 



In the course of these labours he was gradually bringing to- 

 gether a numerous collection of materials, which enabled him to 

 place comparative anatomy on a secure foundation — to effect the 

 discovery of an ancient zoology — and introduce a complete re- 

 formation into the whole system of animated nature. This re- 

 formation was begun in his elementary table, or synopsis of lec- 

 tures in the central school of the Pantheon* — carried still farther 

 in the tables printed at the end of the first volume of his lec- 

 tures on comparative anatomy, — ^brought nearer to perfection in 

 1812, in a memoir inserted in the Annals of the Museum of 

 Natural History-|-, and completed, as far as he had it in his 

 power, in two editions of his Animal Kingdom J. 



According to the principles of these works, now generally 

 diffused and established through the influence of his writings 

 and oral discourses, the natural history of an animal is the know- 

 ledge of all its relations and properties, and its organization 

 must determine its place in a methodical arrangement : anatomy 

 and physiology, therefore, must form the basis of zoology, and 

 the most general and constant facts in organization must deter- 

 mine the great divisions, while those of a less general and more 

 variable kind will serve for secondary divisions. He thus es- 

 tablished a subordination of character and sections, which alone 

 can be the principle of a natural method, that is, of arranging 

 animals in such a manner that the place which each of them oc- 

 cupies affords a general idea of its organization, and the attri- 

 butes which connect it with others.§ This method he regarded 

 as science itself reduced to its most simple expression. 



• One vol. in 8vo. Paris. f 19th Vol. 



X Four vols, in 8vo., Paris, 1817. Second Edition, 5 vols, in 8vo., Paris, 

 1829. Entomology, like all the other branches of natural history, having 

 within a few years received large augmentations, it was not possible that a 

 single individual could thoroughly investigate the whole series of animals. 

 For the publication of this woik, M. Cuvier united with M. Latreille, who 

 undertook the Crustacea and Insects. 



§ No system that is founded upon the observation of a single organ, how- 



