[Reviews of works by George Cuvier].

Date:
[1830?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Reviews of works by George Cuvier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    classification of Professor Storr of Tubingen; lie has adopted the nomenclature of Linnaeus, but he has greatly improved the characters of the genera and species, by introducing more pre- cise and detailed descriptions of the teeth, taken from the skeletons preserved in the National Museum. The arrange- ment of the class of birds has been taken from Linnaeus and Buffon, and the descriptions are short and perspicuous. From the limited means of observation which Cuvier then possessed with regard to birds, he considers this the most imperfect part of the volume. The class of reptiles is divided into two orders, oviparous quadrupeds, and serpents; the former com- prehending the chelonia, sauria, and batrachia of Brogniart and the later editions of the Regne Animal, and the latter order comprehending the ophidia. The divisions of the class of fishes are adopted from Linnaeus ; they consist of six orders, founded on the position of the fins, and Blumenbach had pre- viously copied the same arrangement into his ‘ Manual of Natural History.’ The cartilaginous fishes, which are placed first in the work of Blumenbach, and in the Tableau Elemen- taire, the Leyons d’Anatomie Comparee, and likewise in the Regne Animal of 1817, have been properly thrown to the bottom 1 of the class in the great work on the Natural History of Fishes (1828), and in the new edition of the Regne Animal (1829), as (< in their skeleton and other parts of their organization they [approach to the molluscous animals. The whole of the inverte- brate animals are distributed into three great groups, which correspond with the mollusca, articulata, and zoophyta of the Regne Animal. The animals of the first division, mollusca, are characterized as having a muscular heart, and no longitudinal, knotted, nervous cord; those of the second division, insects and worms, have a longitudinal dorsal vessel, and a knotted spinal cord, or at least one of these two characters ; those of the third division, zoophyta, have neither heart, nor brain, nor nerves. The mollusca are divided into the cephalopoda, gasteropoda nuda, gasteropoda testacea, and acephala; the last of these divisions comprehending Lamarck’s classes, conchifera, tunicata, and cirrhipeda. His next great division he terms insects and worms, and comprehends under it all the Crustacea, arachnida, insecta, annelida, and entozoa of later authors. The arrangement of these is taken chiefly from Linnfeus and Fabricius, and he was as fortunate in having the personal assistance of Fabricius in regard to this class, as he had been in obtaining that of Lacepede for the classes of rep- tiles and fishes, and that of Lamarck for the testaceous mollusca and the corals. Cuvier, however, has paid a minuter attention to