OX THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 47 5 



pletely verify the retrospective prophecy of those who interpreted the 

 facts of the case hy due application of the method of Zadig. 



These Belemnites flourished in prodigious abundance in the seas of 

 the mesozoic or secondary age of the world's geological history ; but 

 no trace of them has been found in any of the tertiary deposits, and 

 they appear to have died out toward the close of the mesozoic epoch. 

 The method of Zadig, therefore, applies in full force to the events of 

 a period which is immeasurably remote, which long preceded the origin 

 of the most conspicuous mountain masses of the present world and the 

 deposition, at the bottom of the ocean, of the rocks which form the 

 greater part of the soil of our present continents. The Euphrates 

 itself, at the mouth of which Oannes landed, is a thing of yesterday 

 compared with a Belemnite; and even the liberal chronology of magian 

 cosmogony fixes the beginning of the world only at a time when other 

 applications of Zadig's method afford convincing evidence that, could 

 we have been there to see, things would have looked very much as 

 they do now. Truly the magi were wise in their generation ; they 

 foresaw rightly that this pestilent application of the principles of com- 

 mon sense inaugurated by Zadig would be their ruin. 



But it may be said that the method of Zadig, which is simple rea- 

 soning from analogy, does not account for the most striking feats of 

 modern paleontology the reconstruction of entire animals from a 

 tooth or perhaps a fragment of a bone ; and it may be justly urged 

 that Cuvier, the great master of this kind of investigation, gave a 

 very different account of the process which yielded such remarkable 

 results. 



Cuvier is not the first man of ability who has failed to make his 

 own mental processes clear to himself, and he will not be the last. The 

 matter can be easily tested. Search the eight volumes of the " Re- 

 cherches sur les Ossemens fossiles " from cover to cover, and no rea- 

 soning from physiological necessities nothing but the application of 

 the method of Zadig pure and simple will be found. 



There is one well-known case which may represent all. It is an 

 excellent illustration of Cuvier's sagacity, and he evidently takes some 

 pride in telling his story about it. A split slab of stone arrived from 

 the quarries of Montmartre, the two halves of which contained the 

 greater part of the skeleton of a small animal. On careful examina- 

 tions of the characters of the teeth and of the lower jaw, which hap- 

 pened to be exposed, Cuvier assured himself that they presented such 

 a very close resemblance to the corresponding parts in the living opos- 

 sum that he at once assigned the fossil to that genus. 



Now, the opossums are unlike most mammals, in that they possess 

 two bones attached to the fore part of the pelvis, which are commonly 

 called "marsupial bones." The name is a misnomer, originally con- 

 ferred because it was thought that these bones have something to do 

 with the support of the pouch, or marsupium, with which some, but 



