tory in Paris. The author's name is not even given, and there
is no imprint. Lamarck's name, however, is written on the outside of the
cover of the copy we have translated. At the end of the otherwise blank
page succeeding the last page (p. 46) is printed the words: _Esquisse
d'un Philosophie zoologique_, the preliminary sketch, however, never
having been added.

He begins by telling his hearers that they should not desire to burden
their memories with the infinite details and immense nomenclature of
the prodigious quantity of animals among which we distinguish an
illimitable number of species, "but what is more worthy of you, and of
more educational value, you should seek to know the course of nature."
"You may enter upon the study of classes, orders, genera, and even of
the most interesting species, because this would be useful to you; but
you should never forget that all these subdivisions, which could not,
however, be well spared, are artificial, and that nature does not
recognize any of them."

"In the opening lecture of my last year's course I tried to convince
you that it is only in the organization of animals that we find the
foundation of the natural relations between the different groups,
where they diverge and where they approach each other. Finally, I
tried to show you that the enormous series of animals which nature
has produced presents, from that of its extremities where are placed
the most perfect animals, down to that which comprises the most
imperfect, or the most simple, an evident modification, though
irregularly defined (_nuance_), in the structure of the
organization.

"To-day, after having recalled some of the essential considerations
which form the base of this great truth; after having shown you the
principal means by which nature is enabled to create (_operer_) her
innumerable productions and to vary them infinitely; finally, after
having made you see that in the use she has made of her power of
generating and multiplying living beings she has necessarily
proceeded from the more simple to the more complex, gradually
complicating the organization of these bodies, as also the
composition of their substance, while also in that which she has
done on non-living bodies she has occupied herself unremittingly in
the destruction of all preexistent combinations, I shall undertake
to examine under your eyes the great question in natural
history--What is a