Natural- Historical Collections. 373 



Note OH Baron Cuvier's Lectures, by a Correspondent. 



We have been obliged by the following remarks on a portion of M. Cuvier's 

 lectures, by a gentleman whose criticisms we shall always value : — 



Having traced JM. Cuvier's interesting progress of the Natural Sciences, in 

 the Edin. Journ. of Nat. and Geog. Science, down to the improvements Intro- 

 duced by the Greeks, I trust it may not be deemed presumptuous to notice one 

 or two singular omissions of the great physiologist of France, when he comes to 

 grapple with history. After noticing the profound acquirements of Moses, com- 

 pared with the leaders of the Ionian colonies, and fixing the age of the Egyptian 

 greatness contemporary with the Judges, it seems strange that he should then trace 

 back the origin of that country's civilization to a source so remote as India, 

 merely because Thibet offered the first asylum to mankind after the deluge. The 

 sacred historian tells us the whole race, journeying /row the east, was assembled 

 in the plain of Shinar ; and as M. Cuvier's own discoveries on the strata of the 

 earth, corroborate his account of a series of successive creations and catastrophes, 

 (which last. Gentile tradition limits to four,*) why discredit his record as to the 

 centre of dispersion ? Is it not more probable that that infant form of society, the 

 institution of castes, was carried across the Arabian Gulf, upon the upper waters 

 of the Nile, than by the circuitous route of the Straits of Babelmandel ? In Sou- 

 thern Persia, as well as in Egypt and India, a kindred system prevailed, and the 

 expulsion of the Divs, or Indian gods, at the era of Zoliawk or Assyrian con- 

 quest, is still remembered by the Guebres. What is singular, too, our present 

 race of gypsies have been clearly traced to modem Chosestan. We should thus 

 have light thrown on the part Abraham and his relative took in the dispute of 

 the king of Elam with his tributaries in Syria, where the Sabian principles of 

 idolatry, founded on astronomy, did not so universally prevail. They could not, 

 however, survive the proclamation of the king of Babylon, not even when the 

 sceptre of the Acha9menides was again established " in Shushan the palace." The 

 Medes, the Yavana Divipa of Hindoo writ, had been taught in a purer school, 

 that of Assyria. The gold, the silver, the brazen, and the iron ages of Hesiod, 

 however fictitious their progressive deterioration, relate to certain successive epochs 

 of our planet. M. Cuvier has shown the conjunction of the Hindoos -f- to be a 

 Ruppositious one calculated back ; yet he will not venture to deny the accuracy of 

 tlieir celebrated era, which extends some centuries anterior to the flood, accord- 

 ing to the Hebrew version. The superior antiquity of that of Egypt, is preserv- 

 ed in the expression of the sun having twice risen where he set, and twice set 

 where be rose, a course of 2920 years, if even a greater length may not be fairly 

 presumed, the time before Herodotus, when the last cycle was uken, not being 

 defined. :{: Though their system of intercalation was not perfected till the Alex- 

 andrian school, the principles of gravitation would seem to have been known by 

 the builders of the Pyramids ; and had not this been the result of actual obser- 

 vation, they would scarcely have been content with a simple duplication of the so- 

 lar day, but, like other pretenders, would have soared into an ideal antiquity ; 

 and the records of the earth had not then been consulted to contradict them. The 

 amplest relics of antediluvian learning might well be expected to be found in the 

 city of the ark, at Thebes. We smile at the incredulity of the ancients, after 

 exploding the fables of their priests, in not believing the circumnavigation of 

 Africa ; yet we ourselves, who have been as much inclined to swallow those of 

 the Brahmins, would now restrict the dawn of science with a scepticism too un- 

 philosophical Caxdidus. 



• They are even particularized by the Mexicans, one as atmospherical, one 

 as igneous, the effect we now witness of crystallization ; and two others, tW 

 one attended by a great disruption of the earth's surface, the other, when the 

 water subsided calmly, diluvial." 



•f- The Arii of Herodotus. 



X Still astronomy no more contradicts the Biblical auiuJs than geology brings 

 the works of God in opposition to his word. 



