54 MEMOIR OF LAMARCK. 



skin ; the form symmetrical, the parts arranged in 

 pairs. The intelligent animals, forming the third 

 grand division, feel, and acquire ideas capable of 

 being preserved, and execute operations between 

 these ideas which furnish them with others; and 

 they are intelligent in different degrees. They 

 possess a vertebral column, a brain and spinal mar- 

 row; distinct senses; organs of motion fixed to an 

 interior skeleton, and symmetrical forms, the parts 

 being placed in pairs*. 



This general distribution of animals has not been 

 very much approved of by naturalists ; and Cuvier 

 asserts that it is neither founded on their organiza- 

 tion, nor an exact observation of their faculties. 

 The degree of intelligence observed in the different 

 classes, would certainly lead most observers to give 

 a very different position to several, from that which 

 they have obtained in the above scale. The insecta 

 and arachnides, for example, which are made to 

 occupy the lowest place among the sentient races, 

 are undoubtedly entitled to the rank assigned to 

 the mollusca and cirrkipedes; for there can be no 

 comparison in this respect between a hive-bee or an 

 ant, and an imperfectly organized and almost inani- 

 mate mollusc. 



At a subsequent period, in consequence of some 

 new discoveries made by M. M. Savigny, Leseur, 

 and Desmarets, he separated certain tribes from the 

 polypi, and formed them into a distinct class under 

 the name of ascidiens. Some new views likewise 



* Animaiix sans Vertebres, i. 381. 



