270 THE OVARIAN EGG. 



by a set of beings totally different from those 

 that inhabit it now ; still farther was it from their 

 thought to imagine that creation after creation 

 had followed each other in successive ages, every 

 one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. 

 It was Cuvier who, aroused to new labors by the 

 hint he received from the bones unearthed at 

 Montmartre, to which all his vast knowledge of 

 living animals gave him no clew, established by 

 means of most laborious investigations the as- 

 tounding conclusion, that, prior to the existence 

 of the animals and plants now living, this globe 

 had been the theatre of another set of beings, 

 every trace of which had vanished from the face 

 of the earth. To his alert and active intellect, 

 and powerful imagination, a word spoken out of 

 the past was pregnant with meaning ; and when 

 he had once convinced himself that he had found 

 a single animal that had no counterpart among 

 living beings, it gave him the key to many mys- 

 teries. The existence of a past creation once 

 suggested, confirmation was found in a thousand 



C O 7 



facts overlooked before. The solid crust of the 

 earth gave up its dead, and from the snows of 

 Siberia, from the soil of Italy, from caves of Cen- 

 tral Europe, from mines, from the rent sides of 

 mountains and from their highest peaks, from 

 the coral beds of ancient oceans, the varied ani- 

 mals that had possessed the earth, ages before 

 man was created, spoke to us of the past. 



