Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/58

56 This arrangement is particularly deserving of attention, from its being admitted by the author of the circular system to be the first approach to a perception of that order of affinities which he supposes to pervade the whole animal kingdom. "In the first volume of his celebrated work," says Mr. Mac Leay, "Lamarck acknowledges that the idea of a simple series constituting the whole of the animal kingdom does not agree with the evident order of nature, because, to use his own words, this order is far from simple; it is branched, and is at the same time composed of several distinct series. He then presumes, that animals offer two separate subramose series, one commencing with the infusoria, and leading by means of the mollusca to the cuttlefish (cephalopoda), and the other commencing with the intestinal worms, and leading to insects. Now, this notion could only have gained a place in the mind of Lamarck from a conviction by experience of its being an incontrovertible truth. His table of affinities, however confused it may appear, or subramose, as it is termed, coincides with the tabular view which I have laid before the public. We have only to join the radiata to the cirripeda. and the annelides to fishes, and Lamarck's table of affinities, with scarcely any alteration, becomes precisely the same as mine ."

In addition to the various branches of natural history already enumerated as cultivated by this indefatigable and ingenious inquirer, another still