were to stamp him as the successor of Linnaeus, were as yet only
fairly begun.



V. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CUVIER AND THE CORRELATION OF PARTS

We have seen that the focal points of the physiological world
towards the close of the eighteenth century were Italy and
England, but when Spallanzani and Hunter passed away the scene
shifted to France. The time was peculiarly propitious, as the
recent advances in many lines of science had brought fresh data
for the student of animal life which were in need of
classification, and, as several minds capable of such a task were
in the field, it was natural that great generalizations should
have come to be quite the fashion. Thus it was that Cuvier came
forward with a brand-new classification of the animal kingdom,
establishing four great types of being, which he called
vertebrates, mollusks, articulates, and radiates. Lamarck had
shortly before established the broad distinction between animals
with and those without a backbone; Cuvier's Classification
divided the latter--the invertebrates--into three minor groups.
And this division, familiar ever since to all students of
zoology, has only in very recent years been supplanted, and then
not by revolution, but by a further division, which the elaborate
recent studies of lower forms of life seemed to make desirable.

In the course of those studies of comparative anatomy which led