240 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



" Dividing the vertebrate animals — as Linnseus had 

 already divided them — into mammals, birds, reptiles, 

 and fishes, he divided the invertebrates into molluscs, 

 insects, worms, echinoderms, and polyps. In 1799 he 

 separated the Crustacea from J;he insects, with which they 

 had been classed hitherto ; in 1800 he established the 

 arachnids as a class distinct from the insects ; in 1802 

 that of the annelids, a subdivision of the worms, and 

 that of the radiata as distinct from the polyps. Time 

 has approved the wisdom of these divisions, founded all 

 of them upon the organic type of the creatures them- 

 selves — that is to say, upon the rational method intro- 

 duced into zoology by Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy 

 St. Hilaire. 



" This introduction being devoted only to Lamarck's 

 labours as a naturalist, we will pass over certain works 

 in which he treats of physics and chemistry. These 

 attempts — errors of a powerful mind which thought 

 itself able by the help of pure reason to establish 

 truths which rest only upon experience — attempts, 

 moreover, which were some of them but resuscitations 

 of exploded theories, such as that of ' phlogistic ' — had 

 not even the honour of being refuted : they did not 

 deserve to be so, and should be a warning to all those 

 who would write upon a subject without the necessary 

 practical knowledge. 



• ***»» 



" At the beginning of this century there was not yet 

 any such science as geology. People observed but 

 little, and in lieu of observation made theories to 

 embrace the entire globe. Lamarck made his in 1802, 



