PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 4I 
attention has been paid to the animals least perfect, 
and when researches on the different complications 
of the organization of these animals have become the 
principal foundation of their study. It is not less 
singular to realize that it was almost alw ays from the 
examination of the smallest objects which nature 
presents to us,and that of considerations which seem to 
us the most minute, that we have obtained the most 
important knowledge to enable us to arrive at the dis- 
covery of her laws, and to determine her course.” 
After a year of preparation he opened his course 
at the Museum in the spring of 1794. In his intro- 
ductory lecture, given in 1803, after ten years of work 
on the lower animals, he addressed his class in these 
words: 
“Indeed it is among those animals which are the 
most multiplied and numerous in nature, and the 
most ready to regenerate themselves, that we should 
seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course 
of nature, and on the means she has employed in the 
creation of herinnumerable productions. In this case 
we perceive that, relatively to the animal kingdom, 
we should chiefly devote our attention to the inverte- 
brate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in 
nature, the singular diversity of their systems of or- 
ganization and of their means of multiplication, their 
increasing simplification, and the extreme fugacity of 
those which compose the lowest orders of these 
animals, show us, much better than the higher 
animals, the true course of nature, and the means 
which she has used and which she still unceasingly 
employs to give existence to all the living bodies of 
which we have knowledge.” 
During this decade (1793-1803) and the one suc- 
ceeding, Lamarck’s mind grew and expanded. Be- 
