458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
The influence of Linné continued to be felt and his system to be 
adopted until a new century had for some time run its course. Mean- 
while, in France, a great zoologist was developing a new system which 
was published at length in 1817, and anew with many modifications 
a dozen years later (1829). 
GEORGES LEOPOLD CHRETIEN FREDERIC DAGOBERT CUVIER. 
Georges Cuvier (born 1769) claimed ¢ that before him naturalists, 
like Linné, distributed all the invertebrates among two classes.? In 
1795 he published an account of memorable anatomical investiga- 
tions of the invertebrates and ranged them all under six classes: 
Mollusks, crustaceans, insects, worms, echinoderms, and zoophytes. 
This was certainly a great improvement over previous systematic 
efforts, but from our standpoint crude in many respects. It was, 
however, necessarily crude, for naturalists had to learn how to look 
as well as to think. 
Cuvier later essayed to do for the animal kingdom alone what 
Linné did for all the kingdoms of nature. So greatly had the num- 
ber of known animals increased, however, that he did not attempt to 
give diagnoses of the species, but merely named them, mostly in foot- 
notes. His superior knowledge of anatomy enabled him to institute 
great improvements in the system. He also first recognized the desir- 
ability of combining in major groups classes concerning which a num- 
ber of general propositions could be postulated. 
It was in 1812 that Cuvier presented to the Academy of Sciences ¢ 
his celebrated memoir on a new association of the classes of the animal 
kingdom, proposing a special category which he called branch (em- 
branchment), and marshaling the classes recognized by him under 
four primary groups: (1) the Vertebrates or Animaux vertébrés; 
(2) the Mollusks or Animaux mollusques; (3) the Articulates or 
Animaux articulés, and (4) the Radiates or Animaux rayonnés. 
These were adopted in the “ Régne Animal.” In the first (1817) 
edition, as in the second (1829-1830), nineteen classes were recognized, 
and in the latter too little consideration was given to the numerous 
propositions for the improvement of the system that had been sug- 
gested and urged meanwhile. 
It has been generally assumed that Cuvier’s work was fully up to 
the high mark of the times of publication, and for many years the 
classification which he gave was accepted by the majority of natural- 
ists as the standard of right. To such extent was this the case that 
his classification of fishes and the families then defined was retained 
to at least the penultimate decade of the last century by the first 
“Regne Animal, 1817, I, 61. 
» Scopoli and Storr admitted more classes. 
¢ Ann. Mus, Hist. Nat., Paris, 1812, 19, 73-84, 
