At the end of the second volume Lamarck gives a tabular view on a page by itself (p. 463), showing his conception of the origin of the different groups of animals. This is the first phylogeny or genealogical tree ever published.

TABLEAU
Servant à montrer l’origine des differens animaux.

The next innovation made by Lamarck in the Extrait du Cours de Zoologie, in 1812, was not a happy one. In this work he distributed the fourteen classes of the animal kingdom into three groups, which he named Animaux Apathiques, Sensibles, and Intelligens. In this physiologico-psychological base for a classification he unwisely departed from his usual more solid foundation of anatomical structure, and the results were worthless. He, however, repeats it in his great work, Histoire naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres (1815–1822).

The sponges were by Cuvier, and also by Lamarck, accorded a position among the Polypes, near Alcyonium, which represents the latter’s Polypiers empâtés; and it is interesting to notice that, for many years remaining among the Protozoa, meanwhile even by Agassiz regarded as vegetables, they were by Haeckel restored to a position among the Cœlenterates, though for over twenty years they have by some American zoölogists been more correctly regarded as a separate phylum.[124] Lamarck also separated the seals and morses from the cetacea. Adopting his idea, Cuvier referred the seals to an order of carnivora.

Another interesting matter, to which Professor Lacaze-Duthiers has called attention in his interesting letter on p. 77, is the position assigned Lucernaria among his Radiaires molasses near what are now Ctenophora and Medusæ, though one would have supposed he would, from its superficial resemblance to polyps, have placed it among the polyps. To Lamarck we are also indebted for the establishment in 1818 of the molluscan group of Heteropoda.

Lamarck’s acuteness is also shown in the fact that, whereas Cuvier placed them among the acephalous molluscs, he did not regard the ascidians as molluscs at all, but places them in a class by themselves under the name of Tunicata, following the Sipunculus worms. Yet he allowed them to remain near the Holothurians (then including Sipunculus) in his group of Radiaires echinodermes, between the latter and the Vers. He differs from Cuvier in regarding the tunic as the homologue of the shell of Lamellibranches, remarking that it differs in being muscular and contractile.

Lamarck’s fame as a zoölogist rests chiefly on this great work. It elicited the highest praise from his contemporaries. Besides containing the innovations made in the classification of the animal kingdom, which he had published in previous works, it was a summary of all which was then known of the invertebrate classes, thus forming a most convenient hand-book, since it mentioned all the known genera and all the known species except those of the insects, of which only the types are mentioned. It passed through two editions, and still is not without value to the working systematist.

In his Histoire des Progrès des Sciences naturelles Cuvier does it justice. Referring to the earlier volume, he states that “it has extended immensely the knowledge, especially by a new distribution, of the shelled molluscs ... M. de Lamarck has established with as much care as sagacity the genera of shells.” Again he says, in noticing the three first volumes: “The great detail into which M. de Lamarck has entered, the new species he has described, renders his work very valuable to naturalists, and renders most desirable its prompt continuation, especially from the knowledge we have of means which this experienced professor possesses to carry to a high degree of perfection the enumeration which he will give us of the shells” (Œuvres complètes de Buffon, 1828, t. 31, p. 354).