864 Cuvier as a Naturalist. 



more for the fossil crocodiles than to exhibit the differences 

 which distinguish them from the living crocodiles, and those 

 which they present amongst themselves. 



It is true that, with some other naturalists, M. Cuvier does 

 not perceive analogy of form, and of the relative position of or- 

 gans, and of connections between every animal, — and here is the 

 precise subject of the discussion which now engages us. He 

 cannot admit that the lungs or the branchiae of vertebral animals, 

 for example, are in the same connections as the branchiae of the 

 molluscae and the Crustacea, situated with the one on the sole 

 of the foot, or fixed on their feet themselves, — and with others 

 often on the back, or round the anus. He does not admit the 

 analogy between the skeleton of the vertebral animals and the 

 skin of the articulata ; he cannot conceive that the tania and the 

 octopus were constructed on the same plan, — that there is a 

 unity of composition between the bird and the echinus, — be- 

 tween the whale and the colimagon, in spite of all the art by 

 which their differences are attempted by degrees to be effa- 

 ced ; and we own that we think as he does, and that we do not 

 believe that there is any thing common betwixt these beings but 

 animality, — that is to say, the execution of the general functions 

 of life. 



It is this difference of connections, or of the relative position 

 of organs, that prevents M. Cuvier from admitting the theory 

 of the progress of the foetus through all the links of the animal 

 scale, inferior to its own species ; since it is evident that in a com- 

 plete whole, where all the parts are linked to one another, as in 

 an animal, the organs cannot change their place and form, so as 

 to correspond one day to a zoophile, and another to an insect, — 

 afterwards to one of the molluscae, then to a fish, a reptile, a 

 bird, and finally one of the mammiferae. Add to this, that cer- 

 tain of the lower animals have some of their organs more com- 

 plicated than those of animals of a higher grade. For example, 

 the stomach of the carnivorae is much more simple than that of 

 the ruminantiae ; and hence it happens that this viscus, at first 

 simple, when it resembles that of the fish and certain reptiles, 

 becomes complicated to arrive at the development which exists 

 in the ruminantiae, and that it again simplifies itself, to assume 

 the form which corresponds to the carnivorae, — to quadrupeds. 



