RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 91 
of families, genera, &c. merely reposed upon the 
arbitrary opinion of their founders. Nay, so destitute 
was zoology of any fundamental law, applicable alike 
to all its various departments, that the question was 
not yet settled, as to the rule of natural progression ; 
was it linear? was it compound? or was it so inter- 
woven, like the meshes of a net, as to defy all un- 
ravelment? The idea of a’‘simple scale in nature 
had long been discussed, and finally abandoned. 
But while these lofty speculations engaged not the 
attention of M. Cuvier, his fellow-labourer, M. 
Lamarck, must have long pondered upon them, for 
he it was who first intimated the existence of a 
double series, which, setting out in opposite directions 
from a given point, met together at another. Nearly 
at the same time, Professor Fischer, a celebrated 
zoologist of Russia, unacquainted, apparently, with 
the opinion of Lamarck, perceived the tendency of 
these two series to form a circle of their own, and 
announced the fact in 1808. But these obscure in- 
timations, unsupported by demonstration, can only be 
said to have been verified by analysis when the first 
part of the celebrated Hore Entomologice was given 
to the world, in 1819,—a work which, for its originality 
and profound research, has never yet, in this science 
at least, been equalled. Whether its accomplished 
author derived the first idea of that circular progres- 
sion of affinities which he establishes, from the idea 
of Lamarck, is unknown, and hardly worth enquiring 
. into; but it seems certain that he was unacquainted 
with the opinion of M. Fischer, just alluded to.* 

* Linn. Trans. vol. xvi. p. 10. 
