Xviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



first remarks on organization — to employ them in order to arrive at new- 

 ones, and to render the distribution perfect — in fine, from this mutual re- 

 action of the two sciences, to elicit a system of zoology that might serve 

 as an introduction and a guide in anatomical investigations, and as a body 

 of anatomical doctrine fitted to develope and explain the zoological system. 

 The first results of this double labour appeared in 1795, in a special 

 memoir upon a new division of the white-blooded animals. A sketch of 

 their application to genera, and to their division in subgenera, was the 

 object of my elementary " Tableau Elementaire des Animaux," printed 

 in 1798, which, in conjunction with M. Dumeril, I improved, in the tables 

 annexed to the first volumes of my " Legons d'Anatomie Comparee" in 

 1800. 



1 should, perhaps, have contented myself with perfecting these tables, 

 and proceeded immediately to the publication of my great work on ana- 

 tomy, if, in the course of my researches, I had not been frequently struck 

 with another defect of the greater number of the general or partial sys- 

 tems of zoology ; I mean the confusion in which the want of critical 

 acumen has left a great number of species, and even several genera. 



Not only were the classes and orders not in conformity with the in- 

 timate nature of the animals, for the purpose of forming a foundation for 

 a treatise on comparative anatomy ; but the genera, though undoubtedly 

 for the most part better composed, presented in their nomenclature very 

 inadequate materials, inasmuch as the species were not arranged under each 

 of them respectively according to its character. Thus, in placing the Sea- 

 cow (Manatus, Cuv.^ in the genus Morse (Trichechus, Z?w.), the Siren in 

 that of the Eels, Gmelin had rendered any general proposition relative to 

 the organization of these two genera impossible, just as by approximating 

 to the same class the same order, and placing side by side the Sepia and 

 the fresh water Polypus, he had made it impossible to say any thing in 

 general on the class and order which embraced such different beings. 



The examples above cited are selected from the most striking of these 

 errors ; but the number of them that existed was infinite, and, though 

 not so easily to be perceived at the first glance, still they were not the 

 less sources of real inconvenience. 



It was not enough, then, to have imagined a new arrangement of classes 

 and orders, and to have properly placed the genera there ; it was also ne- 

 cessary to examine all the species, in order to ascertain if they really be- 

 longed to the genera in which they had been placed. 



When I came to do this, I not only found that the species were either 

 grouped or distributed in defiance of common sense; but I saw that many 

 of the species were by no means positively established by the characters 

 attributed to them, or by the figures and descriptions given of them. 



