t3 2 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



different groups of animals, as conceived by him. Although 

 a crude attempt, it is interesting as being the first of its kind. 

 This is so directly opposed to the idea of scale of being that 

 we make note of the fact that Lamarck forsook that view at 

 least twenty years before the close of his life and substituted 

 for it that of the genealogical tree. 



Lamarck's Position in Science. — Lamarck is comins: into 

 full recognition for his part in founding the evolution theory, 

 but he is not generally, as yet, given due credit for his work 

 in zoology. He was the most philosophical thinker engaged 

 with zoology at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century. He was greater than Cuvier in 

 his reach of intellect and in his discernment of the true 

 relationships among living organisms. We are to recollect 

 that he forsook the dogma of fixity of species, to which Cuvier 

 held, and founded the first comprehensive theory of organic 

 evolution. To-day we can recognize the superiority of his 

 mental grasp over that of Cuvier, but, owing to the personal 

 magnetism of the latter and to his position, the ideas of 

 Lamarck, which Cuvier combated, received but little atten- 

 tion when they were promulgated. We shall have occasion 

 in a later chapter to speak more fully of Lamarck's contribu- 

 tion to the progress of biological thought. 



Cuvier's Four Branches. — We now return to the type- 

 theory of Cuvier. By extended studies in comparative anat- 

 omy, he came to the conclusion that animals are constructed 

 upon four distinct plans or types: the vertebrate type; the 

 molluscan type; the articulated type, embracing animals with 

 joints or segments; and the radiated type, the latter with a 

 radial arrangement of parts, like the starfish; etc. These 

 types are distinct, but their representatives, instead of forming 

 a linear series, overlap so that the lowest forms of one of the 

 higher groups are simpler in organization than the higher 

 forms of a lower group. This was very illuminating, and, 



