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MEMOIR OF DUCROTAY DE BLAINVILLE. 181 



no leaps," exclaims Linnseus. Bonnet exhausts himself in well-meant eiForts to 

 find everywhere equivocal species with which to supply vacancies. At length 

 Cuvier appears, and all idea of continnity, of sequence, is excluded. The animal 

 kingdom is distributed into groups ; definite, circumscribed, profoundly separated, 

 without connexion, without transition. Cuvier is followed by M. de Blainville ; 

 and with him the scries qfheivgs reappears, and now at least with more develop- 

 ment and completeness,* more nearly demonstrated throughout, and, what is 

 here the last step, essentially connected with the doctrine, every day better un- 

 derstood and more respected, oi final causesS 



The chain of beings thus linked together and adapted one to another evidently 

 implies a fixed design, a consistent -plan, an end foreseen. Final causes are the 

 highest philosophic expression of our sciences, and at the same time the most 

 cheering; it is a pleasure of a high order to discover and contemplate that won- 

 derful assemblage of so many difierent forms and forces combined in proportions 

 so just. The spectacle of an infinite wisdom diffiises calm over the human spirit. 

 " It is no small thing," said Leibnitz, "to be content with God and with the uni- 

 verse." , 



In 1832 a severe blow was sustained by science; Cuvier was too soon lost 

 to us. The administration of the Museum decided to transfer M. de Blainville 

 to the chair in which the modern Aristotle had achieved immortality. From 

 that time, it was in the close neighborhood of the collections, due to a half cen- 

 tury of inappreciable labors, that M. de Blainville, a vigilant and almost jealous 

 guardian, pitched his tent ; it was a true tent, an abode worthy of our savants 

 of the middle age, where he reproduced both their long meditations and their 

 exhaustless enthusiasm. 



* In order properly to understand M. do Blainville in bis different labors, regard must 

 everywbere be had to the profound influence exercised upon him by M. Cuvier. The proof 

 of this influence will be found even in this question of the animal series, which is one of 

 those on which Jie has most constantly opposed him. 



M. Cuvier, taking the nervous system as a guide, had established four principal divisions 

 of the animal kingdom — the vertchrala, the nioNusca, the urticulata, and the rudiata or 

 zoophytes. It is on the nervous system also that M. de Blainville constructs his theory, only 

 he separates the last division of M. Cuvier, that of the radiata, into two, which gives him 

 five divisions instead of four — the ostcozoa, M'hich answer to the rertchrata; the entomozoa, 

 which correspond to the articvlata; the malacozoa io the vwllusks ; the tfC/i>/o:oa and the 

 ainorphozoa, which represent the radiata. Such are the five grand types of the animal 

 kingdom, and it is easy to perceive how iipon these is established the ascending scries or 

 scale. Mounting by successive steps from *he amorphozoa to the ostcozoa, he passes to the 

 consideration of this latter great type, and instead of the four classes — mammals, birds, 

 riptilcs, and Jislies — he subdivides it into seven — mammals, birds, pterodactyls, (a lost class 

 of reptiles, ) reptiles, icthyosauri, (another lost class of reptiles,) aniplnbia, (the batrachians 

 of Cuvier,) i\\\i\ fishes. Here also it may easily be seen how the'ascending scale is developed; 

 it remounts from fishes to amphibia, from amphibia to icthyosauri, from these to reptiles, from 

 reptiles to pterodactyls, from the latter to birds, and from birds to mammals. The class of 

 viammals is divided into three sub-classes — monodelplts, didclphs, and ornithodelphs ; and 

 here again the same ascending gradation is seen, from ornithodelphs to didclphs, and from 

 these to monodtlphs. Without entering into further details, it will be seen from what has 

 been stated how M. de Blainville modifies, and almost always multiplies, by subdividing, 

 the grou^ of M. Cuvier; how he connects, while inte»calating in his scale, the lost with the 

 living species ; how he applies to the groups themselves, to types, to classes, to orders, »S:.c., 

 the ideas of series, gradation, ascent, which had till then been more particularly applied to 

 species. His scale is, in the first place, the scale of groups; but he does not stop there. 

 Just as in the entire kingdom there is the series of principal groups or types, (here is in 

 each type the series of classes, iai each class the series of orders, in each order the series of 

 genera, in each genus the series of species. It is a succession of series superposed in line, 

 always ascending and always dn-ect. 



t "The conception oi final causes,^^ says M. de Blainville, "leads rigorously and 

 necessarily to the demonstration of a Being whose intelligence is infinite, and enables us to 

 discern, not only for each created being in itself, but for each group of beings, and in the 

 Avhole assemblage of beings, a plan, a necessary harmony, and within the preconceived 

 limits." » * » * * (Article: Animal oi the Suppl. du Diet, des Sciences Naturellcs.) 



