30 
THE LAW OF ASSOCIATION IN THE ANIMAL 
KINGDOM* 
By M. EDM. PERRIER 
O NE of the characteristics of the course of instruction at 
the Museum, has always been that it exercised a con- 
siderable influence upon the men who have to carry it out. 
Compelled by the very nature of the institution to keep 
himself constantly acquainted with what is known and what 
is sought, with the definitive acquisitions of science and the 
objects of her aspirations, obliged to co-ordinate the most 
recent discoveries with those which preceded them, to test 
all new theories and ideas, and to bind together the materials 
which incessantly accumulate about the stones forming the 
vast edifice of science, the professor sees the lines of that 
edifice become gradually modified, contributes personally to 
the accomplishment of their metamorphosis, and sometimes 
concludes his course under the domination of ideas quite 
different from those which inspired him at starting. 
I admit without reservation that I have undergone this 
influence. Last year I commenced a series of investigations 
upon transformism. I had no prejudices with regard to this 
doctrine. If certain general ideas attracted me towards it, I 
had also present to my mind the objections repeatedly urged 
against it by the most illustrious of French naturalists, and 
among these the men for whom I have the greatest esteem and 
veneration. It seemed to me, however, in the course of my 
lectures that these objections were by no means insurmountable, 
that they were directed against modes of conception of the 
evolution of organisms which were not at all necessary, and 
that they left perfectly intact the actual bases of the doctrine. 
Ascending the series of organisms from the humblest to the 
• This article, which contains a great deal of interesting information and 
some original and suggestive views on the relations of animal forms, is 
slightly abridged from M. Perrier’s opening lecture at the Museum of 
Natural History of Paris. 
