speculations. He possessed especially all the requisite qualifications for a zoologist, and it is on what he accomplished in this department that his fame must principally rest. When we perceive the admirable manner in which he discerned and characterized natural groups, his skill in seizing on the most distinctive marks of species, the indefatigable industry with which he investigated their history and synonymy, together with the excellence of his system of arrangement,—we are led to regret that he was so late in entering upon this field of labour, as to be obliged to confine his attention to one division of the animal kingdom, and that he so frequently deviated even from that, in order to indulge his favourite practice of theorizing.
However little value may now be attached to these theories, without a due consideration of them, we can neither appreciate some of the best of Lamarck's writings, nor understand the character of the man himself. In his own eyes, they appeared of paramount importance. The most practically useful of his zoological and botanical works he regarded as trivial in comparison. He conceived them to present a key to some of the most secret operations of nature, and to afford the means of placing many branches of knowledge on a new foundation. This ardent attachment to views which have so generally been considered extravagant and untenable, may seem surprising in the case of an individual whom all must acknowledge to be possessed of much acuteness and discrimination. It is perhaps
