162 On the Animals represented 



principle in the representation of the beings, the remembrance 

 of which they wished to perpetuate, A process so enlightened, 

 and so rigorously deduced from the collection of facts, exhibits 

 a power of observation in the ancients, the extent and accuracy 

 of which we recognise, in proportion as we study and compre- 

 hend the works they have left us. 



Our first object, then, will be to inquire whether the painters 

 and statuaries of antiquity, have maintained a real correctness 

 in the representation of the different animals they have repro- 

 duced on their monuments. We shall reserve till another time 

 the enumeration of animals, whether sculptured or engraved, 

 which, endowed with all the necessary conditions of existence, 

 seem, like certain species buried in the bowels of the earth, to 

 have no longer now any representatives on the globe. Before, 

 however, publishing this work, we have thought it necessary to 

 give a list of the animals, and of some vegetables, which are so 

 well represented on the monuments of antiquity as to be recog- 

 nised, and to announce, that they must have been designed from 

 nature. 



Cuvier, whom we consider as the Aristotle of modern times, 

 seems to have been the first to demonstrate the necessary con- 

 nection which exists between the reciprocal relation of forms, 

 and the end which the living being had to fulfil ; or, in other 

 words, the conditions of existence to which it was subjected. 

 He was the first to proclaim the fruitful principle, that every 

 organized being constitutes a whole — a system, one and com- 

 plete — whose parts mutually correspond, and concur in the same 

 definite action, by a reciprocal action. " None of these parts 

 can change,"" says he, *' unless the others also change ; conse- 

 quently each of them, taken separately, indicates and gives all 

 the others." 



Accordingly, if the intestines of an animal are organized only 

 for the digestion of flesh, and recent flesh, its jaws must be 

 formed so as to devour prey ; its claws to seize and tear it; its 

 teeth to cut and divide it ; the whole system of the organs of 

 movement to pursue and catcji it ; and that of the organs of 

 sense to observe, and from a distance to recognise it; and, 

 finally, that nature shall have placed in its brain the instinct ne- 

 cessary for hiding itself, and ensnaring its victims. 



