ANIMAL KINGDOM. 331 



ment commence, par la serie des Infusoires," and that "assez 

 long temps aprh V institution des Infusoires et des Polypes 

 elle a commence I'ttablissement d'nne serie nouvelle" he 

 thus allows that in the formation of animals there Avere at 

 least two interferences of a foreign principle. Yet, if this 

 weak theory ever had any merit, it was in the supposition 

 that a particle of matter became totally independent on its 

 first creation, and sufficient, in short, of itself, to account 

 for all the affinities and differences reigning throughout 

 the whole province of Zoology. When then that doctrine 

 which its only use was to support is contradicted by La- 

 marck, the clumsy pillar itself becomes cumbersome; and 

 indeed, from the vague and obscure manner in which its 

 author endeavours to reconcile the existence of two series 

 in Nature with his peculiar theory, I cannot but think that 

 he was aware that he had caused it himself to totter at the 

 very base. 



We therefore can have no doubt of the fact of there 

 being two series of animals in nature, each emanating 

 from the Infusoria ; nor does the observation that these 

 two series meet in the Annelides interfere in any manner 

 with this truth, as I hope already to have shown. It 

 may possibly then be considered as a circumstance in 

 no small degree favourable to the character of the remarks 

 contained in the preceding part of this chapter, that I 

 should, by one method of investigation, have arrived di- 

 rectly at a truth which must have been extorted reluctantly 

 from one of the first naturalists of the age, by a continued 

 course of observations in another. 



M. Lamarck next observes, that the animals composing 

 these two series differ so much from each other when 

 their nervous matter becomes a little concentrated, that 



