32 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



for Man, he occupies a special place and his origin 

 is different. 



I have thought it right to quote in some detail 

 this first genealogical essay of Lamarck, an essay in 

 which every reader, however little familiar with 

 the operations of nature, will already have perceived 

 that nearly all the links accepted by the author 

 are inexact, superficial, and contradicted by all 

 embryological and palseontological data. How can 

 Lamarck, well acquainted as he was with inverte- 

 brate animals, on simple considerations of habitat 

 have connected insects with intestinal worms, 

 caused the Crustacea to be derived from the Arach- 

 nids, and the latter from the Insects, contrary to 

 the geological order of appearance of all these 

 groups ? How can he have conceived for the 

 Vertebrates such monstrous pedigrees as those 

 which allow him to derive the Fishes from the 

 Molluscs, and the Birds from the Tortoises, and 

 to take certain marine Mammals, which are of 

 relatively recent date, for the founders of all terres- 

 trial Mammals ? Such conceptions are really dis- 

 concerting on the part of such an eminent observer 

 as Lamarck, and can hardly be explained otherwise 

 than by an immoderate desire to construct in great 

 haste, even at the cost of error, a grandiose syn- 

 thesis of the whole animal kingdom. Too many 

 examples of such hasty and generally false syntheses 

 will reveal themselves to us as we pursue the history 

 of palaeontological doctrines down to the present 

 time. 



