ON ANNELIDA. 49 



sj'stematists any further, we shall sum up in a few words all 

 that has been done for the arrangement of the chetopoda (leav- 

 ing the others out for the present), from the time of Linnaeus 

 to our own day. 



We have seen that these animals were scarcely known to 

 the ancients, whose observations were confined to the nereides 

 alone, under the name of Sea-scolopendrcB. Linnaeus, collect- 

 ing the little which had been left by Belon and Rondelet, es- 

 tablished them into four genera, Serpiila, Nereis, Sahella, 

 and Amphitrite, the relations of which he did not appreciate, 

 placing them at a distance from each other, in four different 

 orders of his c\bs.?, vermes. Pallas pointed out these relations, 

 and did for them what he had done for the mollusca and testa- 

 cea. Neither Gmelin nor Bruguieres understood the value 

 of his remarks, and profited very incompletely indeed by the 

 detailed observations of MuUer and Otho Fabricius. M. 

 Cuvier was the first who executed what the genius of Pallas 

 had devised, and who united all these animals under a single 

 classic name. In this he was followed by M. de Lamarck, 

 and by all zoologists who extended the application of the na- 

 tural method to zoology. M. de Blainville, in applying his 

 general notions of the methodical classification of animals to 

 the class in question, which he restricted a little, introduced 

 the consideration of the similitude of the rings of the body and 

 of their appendages, for the establishment of orders and fami- 

 lies, and even of a great number of genera, almost at the very 

 moment when M. Savigny, after a long series of minute obser- 

 vations, was publishing a general system of these animals, 

 adopted by MM. de Lamarck and Latreille, in which he made 

 known a great number of new species of all seas, adopting 

 always as the basis of his classification the jaws and gills, but 

 still with a consideration of the nature of the seta?, and the 

 division of the appendages into oars. 



VOL. XIII. E 



