16 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



pally rests, and which has conferred a most important service 

 to Zoology, is his " Natural History of the Invertebrate 

 Animals, presenting the general and particular characters of 

 these Animals, their Distribution, Classes, Families, Genera, 

 and the principal Species referable thereto." It contains the 

 most valuable system that has ever appeared of the inverte- 

 brate division of animals, and has formed the guide to most 

 authors who have since written or occupied themselves in the 

 study of this department of the animal kingdom. 



The science of Comparative Anatomy in its higher and 

 philosophical sense belongs to the eighteenth century. It 

 was by the application of Comparative Anatomy that John 

 Hunter was enabled to erect for himself a lasting monument 

 in the magnificent museum which bears his name, and repre- 

 sents in no small degree the whole range of Zoological 

 Science. Comparative Anatomy in the hands of Cuvier 

 produced the '' Begne Animal" and " Ossemens Fossiles," 

 thus founding a new science — Palaeontology — and an im- 

 proved classification of the entire animal kingdom. 



The small band of Naturalists that signalised the dawn of 

 Natural History in the sixteenth century had now increased 

 to a large army, and were still on the increase everywhere. 



During the first half of the present century, there is no 

 name more worthy to be associated with the increase and 

 progress of Zoological Science in Great Britain than that of 

 Fleming. His " Philosophy of Zoology " was published in 

 1822. Of this work the celebrated anatomist, Dr John 

 Barclay, in a letter to Dr Fleming, dated 8th October 1822, 

 gays — " Your work is excellent, and will be of much advan- 

 tage in conveying to naturalists not only interesting, but very 

 comprehensive views. Your observations on the faculties of 

 the mind are not only excellent, in my opinion, but in some 

 particulars even superexcellent, especially on instinct and 

 reason, on liberty and necessity, and the degrees of the intel- 

 lectual powers possessed by the lower animals. The observa- 

 tions on these subjects, I think, are new, and, as you state 

 them, so obviously just, that it is a matter of surprise how 

 they have not occurred to some hundreds of zoologists before 

 your time. But philosophers, like others, have a partiality 



