1010.] Buff on and Daubenton, Brisson 41 



qu'elles firent I'etonnement dcs curieux par la variete de leiirs formes et 

 I'eclat de leur couleurs." He also made for the Cabinet a large number of 

 anatomical preparations, many of which were figured in the work mentioned 

 below. 



Daubenton's second great service to mammalogy was his descriptive 

 work on the quadrupeds, prepared in collaboration with Buffon and published 

 as a long series of quarto volumes (iv-xv) of the 'Ilistoire naturelle' begin- 

 ning in 175.3. Daubenton's methods and ideals were in direct contrast to 

 those of his brilliant but too speculative colleague Buffon. He was a modest 

 follower of the "ecole des faits" and his work forms a natural development 

 and continuation of that of Perrault. He rejected the classifications of Ray, 

 Klein, and Linnpeus as being artificial and tending to encourage superficial 

 knowledge. Cuvier tells us (1819, p. 50) that the ' Histoire des Quadrupedes' 

 (as it was called in the second edition of the 'Histoire Naturelle,' 1799-1805) 

 comprises the description of the general morphology and internal anatomy 

 of 142 species of quadrupeds, and of the external morphology alone of 26 

 species. Eighteen entirely new species were described, while the number of 

 new observations and illustrations were "innombrables." Cuvier pro- 

 nounced the work virtually the foundation of modern comparative anatomy 

 and systematic mammalogy. 



Each animal is described more or less as an independent imit and the 

 sequence of forms is without regard to the ordinal classifications which had 

 been proposed by other writers. As the nvmiber of forms described is very 

 large, this very fact must have emphasized the need of an ordinal classifi- 

 cation, and must have prepared the way for the acceptance of the systems 

 of Vicq d'Az}T, Geoffroy, Cuvier and others, whose knowledge of mammals 

 must also have been based to a considerable extent upon Daubenton's 

 figures and descriptions. 



Daubenton refrained as a rule from formal generalizations, and about 

 the only one he ever permitted himself, namely that all mammiferous quad- 

 rupeds have seven cervical vertebrae, he lived to see overthrown by the 

 discovery that the Ai, or three toed sloth {Bradypus iridactylus) , has, in fact, 

 nine (Cuvier, oji. cit., p. 52). 



BRissoN, 1756, 1762. 

 'Regnum Animale in Classes IX Distributum sive Synopsis Methodica'. 



8vo. Lugduni Batavorum. 



The first edition of Brisson's work appeared in 1756, two years before 

 the tenth edition of Linne's 'Systema Xaturse.' The second edition ap- 

 peared in 1762. The work is essentially pre-Linntean in method and the 

 classification is a development of certain features of the Raian system. 



