24 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



not partake) (V) that Buffon was no mere compiler, no mere 

 literary man, no mere writer destined to captivate the 

 world by the beauties of a style unmatched, I believe, in 

 France, but a profound philosopher who had already 

 anticipated nearly all the great truths of the transcendental 

 in Science. But neither Buffon nor Linne, whatever might 

 have been the profundity of their views, offered any demon- 

 stration of these views. This is what the world looks for, 

 and rightly expects ; rigid demonstration supported the 

 Newtonian hypothesis, else Newton had written in vain. 

 Palissy, the potter, had said as much as Buffon, but, like 

 him, he had offered no demonstration, and the world 

 looked on them as dreamers dangerous dreamers, of 

 whom the less notice that was taken the better. In Britain, 

 especially, Buffon' s works appeared stripped of all their 

 lofty views, disfigured and degraded ; he passed, even in 

 France, merely as the naturalist who had best described the 

 hot-blooded quadrupeds, as certain mammals were called 

 even in my days ; the bold conjectures of Palissy and of 

 Buffon seemed about to disappear for ever from the field of 

 science. Even Goethe had failed to resuscitate them 

 under other forms. The geological theories of Hutton and 

 Playfair were met successfully by the plausible hypothesis 

 of Werner, when suddenly a man appeared, destined to 

 place Natural Science for ever on a basis which, if not so 

 fixed as the Elements of Euclid, will at least prove as endur- 

 ing. That man was George Cuvier, a German, born on 

 French soil ; an anatomist. This wonderful man, of a 

 rigidly demonstrative turn of mind, when quite young, 

 bethought him of investigating ' the unknown ' in Zoology 

 by means of anatomical research, the only way in which it 

 could be inquired into. Linne and Buffon had described 

 (c) C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., &c., Editor. 



