110 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



sponges, crinoids, branchiopods, lamellibranchs, gas- 

 tropods, cephalopods, cirripedes, fishes, and rep- 

 tiles Zittel formed, as early as 1876, the bold 

 project of accomplishing a complete and detailed 

 revision of the knowledge acquired of fossil animals 

 and plants. But this considerable work, published 

 from 1876 to 1893 under the modest title of Hand- 

 buck der Palceontologie, was not to be, in the author's 

 mind, a simple work of compilation ; there was 

 question of a severe critical revision, founded both 

 on a wide knowledge of the innumerable papers 

 published on the extinct types of the animal king- 

 dom, and on a personal study of their families and 

 genera. An overwhelming task for one man, but 

 more possible to Zittel than to any other, thanks to 

 an incomparable power of work, to a wide erudition, 

 and still more to a personal study of the rich palse- 

 ontological documents collected and classified by 

 the eminent professor of Munich University. 



The work was truly and at all points masterly. 

 Not only all the fossil genera described up to that 

 time by the palaeontologists of all countries were made 

 the object of a new delimitation and a new diagnosis, 

 but each great group was studied in the relations of 

 its anatomical and zoological organization with the 

 representative forms in our present world, in such a 

 way as to give to each fossil type the rational place 

 which it should occupy in a general classification of 

 the series of beings. Finally, the lofty tendency to 

 scientific philosophy which characterizes the work 

 of Zittel is shown by a substantial summary placed 

 at the end of the study of each group, a summary 

 in which the learned palaeontologist strives to retrace 



