PROCEEDINGS Or SOCIETIES, 867 



of the older tertiary rocks were described as animals belonging to extinct genera. 

 The erratic blocks, scattered over the surface of all continents, were adduced as 

 evidence of the Noakian deluge recorded in the inspired narrative. Having made 

 these general observations, Mr. Wright proceeded to describe the Mammalia 

 whose remains abound in the older tertiary rocks, the discovery of which was 

 due to the late Baron Ctjvier ; the genius and industry of this great philosopher 

 was in none of the departments of animated nature more strikingly illustrated 

 than in his laborious and successful researches into the laws that regulate the 

 development of animal structure, by which he dispelled, as it were, the mists 

 that had enshrouded his predecessors in the same path of inquiry.* The unity 

 of organic structure was exemplified by a train of reasoning intended to show 

 that every part of animated bodies has an invariable and constant relation to all 

 the other parts of their economy, and that any deviation in one organ or system 

 produces a corresponding modification in all the others ; this was strikingly 

 illustrated by a general sketch of the organization of a carnivorous and of a 

 herbivorous quadruped. The lecturer said that the same laws pervaded the most 

 simple as well as the most complicated animals ; they were the same in the "Worm 

 as in Man himself; but that the limits of his present lecture would not permit 

 him to enter at greater length on this fascinating branch of philosophical Zoology. 

 The extinct genera of the first fresh- water formation were described, and the 

 generic characters of Palceotkerium, Anoplotherium, Antkracotherium, Ckiropo- 

 tamus, and Adapts, illustrated by beautiful plaster-casts of the skulls of some 

 of these animals, which had been presented to the Institution by Dr. Chi- 

 chester. Of the new genus established by Professor Kaup, the Dinotherium* 

 the remains of which were discovered at Epplesheim, in Hesse Darmstadt, Mr. 

 Wright gave a general sketch, and of the supposed form and habits of this 

 animal, from Kaup's restoration, together with Dr. Buckland's conjectures. 

 From the opinions of these professors the lecturer however dissented, and adduced 



* The lecturer here introduced the strikingly grand passage from this great zoologist's introduc- 

 tion to his description of the hones from the fresh water strata of Mont Martre : " I found 



myself placed as in a great charnel house, surrounded by the mutilated fragments of a hundred 

 ■keletons, belonging to more than twenty diiferent kinds of animals, piled confusedly around one ; 

 itjwas required that every one should be joined to its fellow ; it,'was a resurrection in miniature, but 

 the immutable laws prescribed to living beings were my directors. At the voice of Comparative 

 Anatomy — each bone — each fragment of a bone resumed its place. I have no expressions to describe 

 the pleasure experienced in observing as I discovered one character, how all the consequences which 

 I predicted from it were successively developed. The feet were in accordance with the character 

 announced by the teeth — the teeth in harmony with those indicated beforehand by the teeth — 

 the bones of the legs and thighs, and every thing that ought to unite these two extreme parts, were 

 conformable to each other precisely as I had arranged them before my conjectures were verified 

 by the discovery of the parts entire—in a word, the animal was reconstructed, as it were, from a 

 single bone of its component parts." 



