NATURAL SYSTEMS. — LAMARCK. 199 
resemblances. His work, unfortunately, is so rare in 
this country, that, having in vain endeavoured to procure 
a copy, we can only form our opinion of it from Mr. 
MacLeay’s paper in the Linn. Trans. From these 
notices, it certainly appears that our author laid the first 
foundation of a natural system — rude, indeed, as 
may be expected, but replete with comparisons hitherto 
scarcely noticed. _Hermann’s system may, therefore, be 
said to have been long superseded ; “for his table, as given 
at the end of his work, is any thing but a diagram: 
it is more confused than the Mappa Geographica of 
Linneus, both of which have expressed analogies as if 
they had been affinities.”* 
(255.) The system of Lamarck, in regard to the soft or 
invertebrated animals, deserves particular attention, since 
he was unquestionably the first who, by his unrivalled 
perception of natural affinities, ‘ obtained an indistinct 
view of that circular arrangement,” which was more 
clearly and fully developed by his successors in this intri- 
cate field of enquiry. This has been most fully and most 
honourably admitted by Mr. MacLeay in the following 
passage: —“ In the first volume of his (Lamarck’s) cele- 
brated work, he acknowledges that the idea of a simple 
series constituting the whole of the animal kingdom does 
not agree with the evident order of nature, because, to 
use his own words, this order is far from simple: it is 
branched, and is at the same time composed of several 
distinct series. He then presumes, that animals offer 
two separate subramose series, one commencing with 
the Infusoria, and leading by means of the mellusca to 
the cuttlefish (Cephalopoda), and the other commencing 
with the intestinal worms, and leading to insects. Now, 
this notion could only have gained a place in the mind 
of Lamarck from a conviction by experience of its being 
an incontrovertible truth.” After enumerating the series 
thus indicated by Lamarck +, our author adds, ‘“ Now, 
* Linn. Trans, vol. xvi. p. 11. note. 
+ Nat. Hist. des Anim. sans Vert. vol. i. p, 456. 
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