ON ANNELIDA. 
49 
systematists any further, we shall sum up in a few words all 
that has been done for the arrangement of the chetopoda (leav- 
ing the others out for the present), from the time of Linnaeus 
to our own day. 
We have seen that these animals were scarcely known to 
the ancients, whose observations were confined to the nereides 
alone, under the name of Sea-scolopendrcc. Linnaeus, collect- 
ing the little which had been left by Belon and Rondelet, es- 
tablished them into four genera, Serpula , Nereis , Sabella , 
and Amphitrite , the relations of which he did not appreciate, 
placing them at a distance from each other, in four different 
orders of his class vermes. Pallas pointed out these relations, 
and did for them what he had done for the mollusca and testa- 
cea. Neither Gmelin nor Bruguieres understood the value 
of his remarks, and profited very incompletely indeed by the 
detailed observations of Muller and Otho Fabricius. M. 
Cuvier was the first who executed what the genius of Pallas 
had devised, and who united all these animals under a single 
classic name. In this he was followed by M. de Lamarck, 
and by all zoologists who extended the application of the na- 
tural method to zoology. M. de Blainville, in applying his 
general notions of the methodical classification of animals to 
the class in question, which he restricted a little, introduced 
the consideration of the similitude of the rings of the body and 
of their appendages, for the establishment of orders and fami- 
lies, and even of a great number of genera, almost at the very 
moment when M. Savigny, after a long series of minute obser- 
vations, was publishing a general system of these animals, 
adopted by MM. de Lamarck and Latreille, in which he made 
known a great number of new species of all seas, adopting 
always as the basis of his classification the jaws and gills, but 
still with a consideration of the nature of the setae, and the 
division of the appendages into oars. 
VOL. XIII. E 
