2 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



I was necessitated then, — and the task occupied considerable time, — I was com- 

 pelled to make anatomy and zoology, dissection and classification, proceed beforehand; 

 to seek, in my first remarks on organization, for better principles of distribution ; 

 to em]iloy these, in order to arrive at new remarks ; and in their turn the latter, to 

 carry the principles of distribution to perfection : in fine, to elicit from the mutual 

 reaction of the two sciences upon each other, a system of zoology adapted to serve as 

 an introduction and a guide in anatomical researches, and a booty of anatomical doctrine 

 fitted to develope and explain the zoological system. 



The first results of this double labour appeared in 1795, in a special memoir upon a 

 new division of the white-blooded animals. A sketch of their application to genera, 

 and to the division of these into sub-genera, formed the object of my Tableau 

 Eh'mentaire des Animaux, printed in 1798, and I improved this work, with the assistance 

 of M. Dumeril, in the tables annexed to the first volume of my Lecons d' Anatomie 

 Compai-t'e, in ISOO. 



I should, perhaps, have contented myself with perfecting these tables, and proceeded 

 immediately to the publication of my great work on anatomy, if, in the course of my 

 researches, I had not been frequently struck with another defect of the greater number 

 of the general or partial systems of zoology ; I mean, the confusion in which the want 

 of critical precision had left a vast number of species, and even many genera. 



Not only were the classes and orders not sufiiciently conformed to the intrinsical 

 nature of animals, to serve convenient^ as the basis to a treatise on comparative 

 anatomy, but the genera themselves, though ordinarily better constituted, offered but 

 inadecpiate resources in their nomenclature, on account of the species not having 

 been arranged under each of them, conformably to their characters. Thus, in placing 

 the Manati in the genus Morse, the Siren in that of the Eels, Gmelin had rendered any 

 general proposition relative to the organization of these genera impossible ; just as by 

 approximating in the same class and in the same order, and placing side by side, the 

 Cuttle and the fresh-water Polypus, he had made it impossible to predicate anything 

 generally of the class and order which comprised such incongruous beings. 



I select the above examjiles from among the most prominent ; but there existed 

 an infinitude of such mistakes, less obvious at the first glance, which occasioned incon- 

 veniences not less real. 



It was not sufficient, then, to have imagined a new distribution of the classes and 

 orders, and to have properly placed the genera ; it was also necessary to examine all 

 the species, in order to be assured that they really belonged to the genera in which 

 they had been placed. 



Having come to this, I found not only species grouped or dispersed contrary to all rea- 

 son, but I remarked that many had not been established in a positive manner, either 

 by the characters which had been assigned to them, or by their figures and descriptions. 



Here one of them, by means of sj-nonymes, represents several under a single name, 

 and often so dilferent that they should not rank in the same genus : there a sino-le 

 one is doubled, tripled, and successively reappears in several sub-genera, rrenera, and 

 sometimes different orders. 



What can Ije said, for example, of the Trichechus manatus of Gmelin, which, under 

 a single specific name, comprehends three species and two genera, — two genera differing 

 in almost everj'thing .' By what name shall we speak of the Veldla, which fi"-ure3 



