LAMARCK THE ZOOLOGIST 



197 



thing to Cuvier, yet he knew how to utilize the work 

 in anatomy offered by Cuvier in making a natural 

 classification. His failing eyesight, which obliged 

 him latterly to trust to the eyes of others ; his poverty 

 and trials of various kinds, more than excuse the 

 occasional slips which we find in some of the later 

 volumes of the Animaux sans Vertibres. These are 

 rather of the character of typographical errors than 

 faults of scheme or principle. 



" The work of Lamarck is really the foundation of 

 rational natural malacological classification ; practi- 

 cally all that came before his time was artificial in 

 comparison. Work that came later was in the line 

 of expansion and elaboration of Lamarck's, without 

 any change of principle. Only with the application 

 of embryology and microscopical work of the most 

 modern type has there come any essential change of 

 method, and this is rather a new method of getting 

 at the facts than any fundamental change in the way 

 of using them when found. I shall await your work 

 on Lamarck's biography with great interest. 

 " I remain, 



" Yours sincerely, 



"William H. Dall." 



