Death ofCuvier, 211 



tiful dissertations on the voices of birds, on crocodiles, and many 

 different points of zoology. Such, also, are his descriptions of 

 living animals in the menagerie, &c. Every where, even in the 

 most minute details, we observed that clear, luminous, methodic 

 cal spirit, and sagacity, which characterised him. 



He perceived the necessity of collecting the whole of his 

 ideas, and presented to the public, in 1817, a general table of 

 Zoological Classification. This work, entitled " Le Regne Ani- 

 male distribue (Tapres son Organization,'" 4 vols. 8vo, soon 

 became the foundation of all zoological studies ; in most of the 

 schools, the lectures, the collections, the works of research, were 

 more or less elucidated and illustrated by an appeal to this great 

 work. M. Cuvier was assisted by his friend M. Latreille, in 

 the part of his work connected with the class of insects, which 

 is in itself more numerous than all the rest of the animal king- 

 dom, and would require the whole life of a laborious man. But 

 he had persuaded this skilful entomologist to deviate in some 

 points from his usual system, that his labours might agree with 

 the other parts of the work. 



The redaction of the Regne Animal shewed M. Cuvier how 

 far behind the study of fishes was to the rest of zoology, and 

 made him feel the accumulated difficulties of this branch of 

 science, from the obscurity of the anatomy of these animals, 

 and the impossibility of knowing with precision the laws from 

 the comparison of their organs, as well as by the want of good 

 collections, and perhaps also by the too artificial spirit which 

 had hitherto prevailed in the study of Ichthyology. He exerted 

 himself to collect, in the museum of Paris, skeletons of fishes 

 from all parts of the world, and had such success in his search 

 for the materials of his work, that the number of fishes in 

 the museum, which had scarcely amounted to a thousand kinds, 

 were now, in a few years, raised to about six thousand. He 

 anatomised a great number with unusual care, and associated 

 with himself in the study of their details, a man of merit, M. 

 Valenciennes, and became thus, in a period which must be 

 called short, if judged by the immensity of its results, enabled 

 to arrange the elements of his great history of fishes, of which 

 the first volumes have appeared, and the public hope for the 



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