PHOFESSOX OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 



41 



attention has been paid to the animals least perfect, 

 and when researches on the different complications 

 of the organization of these animals have become the 

 principal foundation of their study. It is not Iess~'\ 

 singular to realize that it was almost always from the \ 

 examination of the smallest objects which nature 

 presents to us, and that of considerations which seem to 

 us the most minute, that we have obtained the most \ 

 important knowledge to enable us to arrive at thedis- 3 

 covery of her laws, and to determine her course." 



After a year of preparation he opened his course 

 at the Museum in the spring of 1794. In his intro- 

 ductory lecture, given in 1803, after ten years of work 

 on the lower animals, he addressed his class in these 

 words : 



" Indeed it is among those animals which are the'\ 

 most multiplied and numerous in nature, and the] 

 most ready to regenerate themselves, that we should ) 

 seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course I 

 of nature, and on the means she has employed in the ( 

 creation of her innumerable productions. In this case / 

 we perceive that, relatively to the animal kingdom, 

 we should chiefly devote our attention to the inverte- 

 brate animals^because their enormous multiplicity in 

 nature, the singular diversity of their sy.stems of or- 

 ganization and of their means of multiplication, their 

 increasing simplification, and the extreme fugacity of 

 those which compose the lowest orders of these / 

 animals, show us, much better than the higher 1 1 

 animals, the true course of nature, and the means /| 

 which she has used and which she still unceasingly ' ' 

 employs to give existence to all the living bodies of , 

 which we have knowledge." '' 



During this decade (i 793-1 803) and the one suc- 

 ceeding, Lamarck's mind grew and expanded. Be- 



