CHAPTER X 



THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN ANATOMY AND 

 PHYSIOLOGY 



THE focal points of the physiological world towards 

 the close of the eighteenth century were Italy and Eng- 

 land, but when Spallanzani and Hunter passed away the 

 scene shifted to France. The time was peculiarly pro- 

 pitious, 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 fashion. Thus it \yas that Cuvier came for- 

 ward with a brand-new classification of the animal king- 

 dom, establishing four great types of being, which he 

 called vertebrates, molluscs, articulates, and radiates. 

 Lamarck had shortly before established the broad dis- 

 tinction between animals with and those without a back- 

 bone; Cuvier's classification divided the latter the in- 

 vertebrates into three minor groups. And this divis- 

 ion, 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 elab- 

 orate recent studies of lower forms of life seemed to 

 make desirable. 



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