CHAPTER III 



CUVIER 



CuviER was perhaps the greatest of comparative anatomists ; 

 his work is, in the best sense of the word, classical. 



Like all his predecessors, like Aristotle, like the Italian 

 anatomists, Cuvier studied structure and function together, 

 even gave function the primacy. 



Some functions, he says, 1 are common to all organised 

 bodies origin by generation, growth by nutrition, end by 

 death. There are also secondary functions. Of these the 

 most important, in animals at least, are the faculties of 

 feeling and moving. These two faculties are necessarily 

 bound up together ; if Nature has given animals sensation 

 she must also have given them the power of movement, the 

 power to flee from what is harmful and draw near to what is 

 good. These two faculties determine all the others. A 

 creature that feels and moves requires a stomach to carry 

 food in. Food requires instruments to divide it, liquids to 

 digest it. Plants, which do not feel and do not move, have 

 no need of a stomach, but have roots instead. Thus the 

 " Animal Functions " -of feeling and moving determine the 

 character of the organs of the second order, the organs of 

 digestion. These in their turn are prior to the organs of 

 circulation, which are a means to the end of distributing the 

 nutrient fluid or blood to all parts of the body. These 

 organs of the third order are not only dependent on those of 

 the second order, but are also not even necessary, for many 

 animals are without them. Only animals with a circulatory 

 system can have definite breathing organs lungs or gills. 



1 Lemons d' Anatomic Coinparre, tome i., pp. \ocf scq., 1800. 



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