162 REPORT — 1851. 



Blumenbach it was who first observed that true worms are in no instance 

 distinguished by the possession of articulated organs of motion, a negative 

 character in whicli they are separated from all insects and Crustacea. Ad- 

 ditions to the number of genera at this period were made by Gmelin in his 

 new edition of the ' Systema Naturae.' 



Under the name of Worms^ Cuvier, in the year 1798, in his Synopsis of 

 Animals, introduces a chapter in which the Vermes of Linnaeus are presented 

 under two leading groups, of which one includes those worms in which the 

 setae or spines for locomotion are present ; and the other those in which these 

 organs are absent : thus were first instituted the two orders ChcEtopoda and 

 Apoda, a distinction afterwards adopted by M. de Blainville. Cuvier thus fol- 

 lowed in the direction first indicated by Pallas, and abandoning the views of 

 Linnaeus, ret^urned to the adoption of those of Aldrovandus, Mouffet, and 

 Ray. 



Even at this period in the history of invertebrated animals, which after- 

 wards he himself was destined so remarkably to extend, Cuvier saw, though 

 only with dim insight, the necessity of separating the Entozoa (which at the 

 time could be thrown only into a sort of i7icerta sedes) from the true worms. 

 In the year 1802, in a memoir read before the 'Institute' on the organiza- 

 tion of the Chatopoda,M.. Cnwier first proposed to designate this division under 

 the phrase red-blooded worms, adding to it the genera Hirudo and Lumbricus, 

 It was about this time that M. de Lamarck defined with increased clearness 

 the line indicated by Cuvier which divided the Chcetopoda from the Intestina. 

 A new aera in the history of the Annelida was now about to occur, for it was 

 in the year 1812 that the class-name Annelides sprang from the fertile and 

 inventive fancy of M. de Lamarck. By this denomination, through various 

 mutations, the Worm-tribe has ever since been known among naturalists. 



Nomenclature. — The word Annelides, invented by M. de Lamarck, and 

 adopted by M. Bruguiere in his excellent article in the French Encyclopae- 

 dia, by M. de Blainville, by M. de Savigny, and Milne-Edwards, is probably 

 derived from the Latin annellus, to which has been affixed the Greek termi- 

 nation eidos. It is therefore a compound epithet of illegitimate construction, 

 for the rules governing the formation of new words require that the consti- 

 tuent etymons should be drawn from the same language. It is not a purely 

 French word, for the substantive annelet is used in French to signify the di- 

 minutive of ring. It is not a Latin word, for the substantive annus, i. e.cir- 

 culus, gives the participle annulata, and this is the name which Mr. Macleay 

 has preferred*. 



The Vermes of Linnaeus, then, became the Vers a sang rouge of the early 

 editions of the 'Regne Animal' : i\ie Annelides of Lamarck, Blainville, Savigny, 

 Fleming, Audouin and Milne-Edwards, has settled into the latinized Annelida 

 of all English authors on comparative anatomy ; a word, however ungram- 

 matical, which has grown into universal and unalterable employment among 

 all modern naturalists. 



Zoological position oftlie. Class. — The attempt to allocate animals in a linear 

 series from the zoophyte to the mammal has led to many false distributions 

 of classes ; nor is it yet manifest that the truly natural principle of arrange- 

 ment has been evolved out of the wondrously accumulated data of modern 

 science. Neither the nervous nor the circulatory system is available, in the 

 inferior extreme of the scale, as a groundwork of classification. From ex- 

 tended researches on the homology of the nutritious fluids of the Invertebrata 

 recently conducted by the authorf, it is certain that below the Echinoder- 



* Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. iv. p. 385. 



t For a full statement of these observations, see Art.PDi.MO, Cyclop. Anat. and Physiology. 



