2 6 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



Zoology, would have commenced and terminated with 

 Cuvier but for this one circumstance he had created 

 Geology, Palaeontology ; that last and most wonderful 

 science, which seems to have no limits. He had shown 

 that without a knowledge of the extinct Zoologies there 

 can be no Geology, properly speaking : none at least 

 likely to interest man. Now this extinct Zoology cannot 

 be well understood, if at all, without a knowledge of the 

 living Zoology, that being the term and mean of compari- 

 son. Thus was Zoology forced at last into the Schools, 

 Universities, and Collegiate Institutions (dJ] 



" The necessity for this was first seen and admitted in 

 France, from whence it naturally was imported into Eng- 

 land, where Cuvier and his supposed views had become 

 fashionable ; the single geologist at the Board of Ordnance, 

 McCulloch, was slowly replaced by a body of scientific 

 men, each teaching a different department of Natural 

 Science ; out of this arose a School of Practical Geology, 

 and various chairs in a similar direction came to be founded 

 in Collegiate Educational Institutions. The illustrious 

 Sedgwick, to whom Geology unquestionably owes its present 

 position in Britain, set an example in Cambridge which 

 cannot be too much praised nor too closely followed. 



"Thus originated, the gradual introduction of zoolog- 

 ical science into the curriculum of study for university 

 honours demanded of all, I presume, who mean to follow 



(d) Cuvier had shown Anatomy to be the only safe basis for testing 

 Zoology, and a comparison of it with the extinct the only guide to 

 Palaeontology ; it may be, and has been, called an empirical method, 

 by which I presume is meant that the method is not strictly scientific. 

 I have all my life been of this opinion, but the method notwithstanding 

 has led to icsults second only, if second, to the Newtonian discoveries. 

 Translator's Note. 



