xxiv.j AMI BOUE. 229 



tion was constantly alert and given to prophesying the 

 future of science. However, having seen much more 

 of the world than Cuvier ever did, his large practical 

 experience often put a limit to his audacious generali- 

 zations, bringing him to more just and rational ideas, 

 more especially in regard to physical geography. 



Cuvier was an excellent practical geologist and ob- 

 server in the field, and he understood, and may be said 

 to have created, all the principles of stratigraphy and 

 of classification of strata. However, he failed com- 

 pletely in trying to maintain the question of the uni- 

 versal deluge, and the biblical genesis, notwithstanding 

 many contradictory facts well known to him, and which 

 he systematically ignored ; as witness his celebrated 

 command to his assistant, Laurillard, to throw out of 

 his laboratory window the skeleton of the fossil man 

 of Lahr (Grand Duchy of Baden), found in the loess 

 (Quaternary) by Ami Boue, saying : " cela vient d'un 

 cimetiere." Cuvier thought that no human bones could 

 be fossil remains, an opinion often disproved by facts 

 since 1829. Boue, justly wounded by this rash excla- 

 mation of Cuvier, calls it his " hypocrisie biblique," - a 

 phrase which he extends even to Agassiz in his " Auto- 

 biographic," 1879, p. xix. of the catalogue of his works. 

 Cuvier and Agassiz were unwilling to mix science and 

 religion, and from their education and their connection 

 with Protestantism, did not feel justified in accepting 

 facts which seemed probable only, but which lacked 

 'substantial and repeated proofs. Neither of them was 

 hypocritical, having too great a respect for science to 

 merit such a grave condemnation. Boue went too 



