132 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
different groups of animals, as conceived by him. Although 
a crude attempt, it is interesting as being the first of its kind. 
This is so directly opposed to the idea of scale of being that 
we make note of the fact that Lamarck forsook that view at 
least twenty years before the close of his life and substituted 
for it that of the genealogical tree. 
Lamarck’s Position in Science.—Lamarck is coming into 
full recognition for his part in founding the evolution theory, 
but he is not generally, as yet, given due credit for his work 
in zodlogy. He was the most philosophical thinker engaged 
with zodlogy at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning 
of the nineteenth century. He was greater than Cuvier in 
his reach of intellect and in his discernment of the true 
relationships among living organisms. We are to recollect 
that he forsook the dogma of fixity of species, to which Cuvier 
held, and founded the first comprehensive theory of organic 
evolution. To-day we can recognize the superiority of his 
mental grasp over that of Cuvier, but, owing to the-personal 
magnetism of the latter and to his position, the ideas of 
Lamarck, whick’Cuvier combated, received but little atten- 
tion when they were promulgated. We shall have occasion 
in a later chapter to speak more fully of Lamarck’s contribu- 
tion to the progress of biological thought. 
Cuvier’s Four Branches.—We now return to the type- 
theory of Cuvier. By extended studies in comparative anat- 
omy, he came to the conclusion that animals are constructed 
upon four distinct plans or types: the vertebrate type; the 
molluscan type; the articulated type, embracing animals with 
joints or segments; and the radiated type, the latter with a 
radial arrangement of parts, like the starfish; etc. These 
types are distinct, but their representatives, instead of forming 
a linear series, overlap so that the lowest forms of one of the 
higher groups are simpler in organization than the higher 
forms of a lower group. This was very illuminating, and, 
