ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE NINE- 

 TEENTH CENTURY 



CUVIER AND THE CORRELATION OF PARTS 



WE have seen that the focal points of the physiolog- 

 ical world towards the close of the eighteenth 

 century were Italy and England, but when Spallan- 

 zani and Hunter passed away the scene shifted to 

 France. The time was peculiarly propitious, as the 

 recent advances in many lines of science had brought 

 fresh data for the student of animal life which were in 

 need of classification, and, as several minds capable of 

 such a task were in the field, it was natural that great 

 generalizations should have come to be quite the fash- 

 ion. Thus it was that Cuvier came forward with a 

 brand-new classification of the animal kingdom, es- 

 tablishing four great types of being, which he called 

 vertebrates, mollusks, articulates, and radiates. La- 

 marck had shortly before established the broad dis- 

 tinction between animals with and those without a 

 backbone; Cuvier's classification divided the latter 

 the invertebrates into three minor groups. And this 

 division, familiar ever since to all students of zoology, 

 has only in very recent years been supplanted, and then 

 not by revolution, but by a further division, which the 

 elaborate recent studies of lower forms of life seemed to 

 make desirable. 



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