ANIMAL KINGDOM. 289 



certain analogies respecting the osteology of the Vertebrata, 

 which would, if correct, reduce their skeletons to one type, 

 as well with respect to the appendages of the spine as to 

 the spine itself. How far these analogies may be accu- 

 rate, it is for persons more skilled in anatomy than I am to 

 determine; but the Philo&ophie Anatomique is evidently 

 a book on which it may hereafter be well worth the trou- 

 ble of those who would develope the natural place of Man, 

 to bestow some attention. In the intoxication however 

 which proceeded from the discovery of so much unity 

 among those animals which he had been in the habit of 

 studying, M. Geoffroy hastily imagined that all those with 

 which he was unacquainted must be vertebrated likewise ; 

 and thus gave, with the impetuosity so proverbial in his 

 countrymen, an example to the world of a professor first 

 .publishing an assertion on a subject of which he was to- 

 tally ignorant, and then sitting down to study this subject 

 in order that he might prove his assertion. It is however 

 injustice due to the talents of M. Geoffroy to state, that 

 each succeeding Memoire seems to show, that as he pro- 

 ceeds deeper into the science of unvertebrated animals he 

 gets further from the scope of his original propositions, and 

 approaches nearer to those notions which are more com- 

 monly received. Nor ought it to pass unobserved, that 

 some of the secondary positions laid down in the course 

 of his third Memoire are such as require much delibera- 

 tion on the part of that Entomologist who may be inclined 

 to dispute them. We however, in this place, have only 

 to do with the principal points of his doctrine as they are 

 connected with the subject now in hand. 



That every animal is vertebrated is an assumption so 

 contrary to well-established facts, and so demonstrative of 



U 



