444 AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY 



animals long since extinct were found, they naturally presented some 

 difficulty and were regarded by some as misfits, animals of which 

 models had been made and then rejected, others saw in these fossils 

 traps laid by the evil one for the undoing of the faithful. 



In the revival of natural sciences in the eighteenth century, 

 Biology became once more a subject of study in which many 

 valuable observations were made, and it soon became evident that 

 enquiring minds demanded some satisfactory explanation of the 

 enormous variety of living beings inhabiting the earth. 



To enable biologists to deal with the mass of observations that 

 had gradually accumulated and was fast being added to, it early 

 became necessary for them to be reduced to some sort of order which 

 in the first place meant a satisfactory system of classification. The 

 English naturalist, John Ray (1627-1705), was the first to really 

 attempt a classification of living things on the basis of anatomical 

 resemblance. He framed a definition of a species to be used as a 

 unit, and upon this, subsequent classifications were based. Another 

 noteworthy contribution that he made was the separation of 

 flowering plants into Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, and he also 

 called attention to the important fact that it was impossible to rely 

 entirely upon one organ in a group of organisms in any system of 

 classification. 



Karl Linne or Linnaeus (1741-1789), a Swede, rendered the 

 growing biological science a great service by devising a system of 

 naming animals and plants. To each he gave two names, the 

 first or generic name designating the genus or group of similar 

 types to which it belonged, and the second or specific name 

 designating the species or collection of almost identical forms among 

 which it could be included. He himself held, " There are as many 

 different species as there were different forms created in the beginning 

 by the Supreme Being." The species was thus considered as estab- 

 lished once and for all without the possibility of being changed. 

 He did a great amount of important work, naming and describing 

 a large number of animals and plants and arranging them in groups, 

 and many of his names are retained to-day. In consequence of this 

 his name had considerable authority, and his idea of the fixity of 

 species was widely accepted. 



Cuvier (1769-1832) carried the Linnaean system a step further, 

 by grouping genera together in larger categories united by a common 

 basis of structural similarity, and in this way laid the foundations 

 of the science of Comparative Anatomy. Further, he was the first 

 biologist to study fossil forms, and more noteworthy still, he dis- 

 covered the striking palaeontological fact that the lower and conse- 

 quently more remote the layer from which fossils are obtained the 



