LINNAEUS AND NATURAL HISTORY I3 1 



lhat animals exhibit four types of organization, and his types 

 were substituted for the primary groups of Linna?us. 



The Scale of Being. — In order to understand the bearing 

 of Cuvier's conclusions we must take note of certain view- 

 regarding the animal kingdom that were generally accepted 

 at the time of his writing. Between Linnaeus and Cuvier 

 there had emerged the idea that all animals, from the lowest 

 to the highest, form a graduated series. This grouping of 

 animals into a linear arrangement was called exposing the 

 Scale of Being, or the Scale of Nature (Scala Nalurcr). 

 Buffon, Lamarck, and Bonnet were among the chief ex- 

 ponents of this idea. 



That Lamarck's connection with it was temporary has 

 been generally overlooked. It is the usual statement in the 

 histories of natural science, as in the Encyclopedia Britanuica, 

 in the History of Carus, and in Thomson's Science 0] Life, 

 that the idea of the scale of nature found its fullest expression 

 in Lamarck. Thomson says: " His classification (1801-1812) 

 represents the climax of the attempt to arrange the groups 

 of animals in linear order from lower to higher, in what was 

 called a scala natnrce" (p. 14). Even so careful a writer as 

 Richard Hcrtwig has expressed the matter in a similar form. 

 Now, while Lamarck at first adopted a linear classification, 

 it is only a partial reading of his works that will support the 

 conclusion that he held to it. In his Syslhme des Animaux 

 sans Vertebres, published in 1801, he arranged animals in 

 this way; but to do credit to his discernment, it should be 

 observed that he was the first to employ a genealogical tree 

 and to break up the serial arrangement of animal form-. In 

 1809, in the second volume of his Philosophic Zoologique, 

 as Packard has pointed out, he arranged animals according 

 to their relationships, in the form of a trunk with divergent 

 branches. This was no vague suggestion on his part, but 

 an actual pictorial representation of the relationship between 



