MODERN SCIENCE. 129 



conclude that they have alike been produced from a similar 

 living filament. In some this filament in its advance to 

 maturity has acquired hands and fingers with a fine sense 

 of touch, as in mankind. In others it has acquired claws 

 and talons, as in tigers and eagles. In others, toes with 

 an intervening web or membrance, as in seals and geese. 

 In others, it has acquired cloven hoofs, as in cows and swine, 

 and whole hoofs in others, as in the horse ; while in the bird 

 kind this original living filament has put forth wings instead 

 of arms or legs, and feathers instead of hair." 



These passages might have been written by his grandson 

 Charles Darwin so thoroughly do they agree with the 

 latter's teaching. But we must at the same time recognise 

 that they expressed suggestions only, and, profound as these 

 suggestions were, they lacked the authority of that evidence 

 and demonstration which it was the glory of his grandson 

 to furnish, and which alone could carry conviction. They 

 nevertheless gave a strong impetus to the movement of 

 inquiry which was already agitating the European mind. 



1744 1829. Lamarck, who may be called the founder 

 of PHILOSOPHICAL ZOOLOGY, divided the animal kingdom 

 into two divisions the Vertebrata, and the Invertebrata 

 terms which have been retained. He investigated fossil shells 

 {as Cuvier did fossils of quadrupeds) opening thus a new 

 palaeontological area shells holding a vast place in the 

 classification of geological strata. He studied invertebrate 

 animals worms, snails, insects, shell-fish, sea-anemones, and 

 sponges ; showed for the first time their infinite variety of 

 forms and organisation, together with the important part 

 they perform in nature. Science is also indebted to him for 

 the separation of the Crustacea (lobsters, crabs, shrimps) from 

 insects, the introduction of the tribes of the arachnida 

 (spiders), the determination of the class which he called 

 annelida (worms, centipeds), the distinction of the micro- 

 scopic infusoria from the polypes (radiate animals) ; he 

 further determined the genera of the mollusca (snails, oysters), 

 many genera and species of coral, and finally described and 

 explained the fossil shells of the Paris chalk in a masterly 

 manner. He crowned his studies of the lower animals by 



