212 Death of Cuvier. 



remainder from his laborious coadjutor. The recent embar- 

 rassments of the book-trade had a little delayed its progress, 

 and as the part written was already prepared for the printer, he 

 employed himself in revising his " Lectures on Comparative 

 Anatomy,"" in order to publish a second edition, which had long 

 been eagerly desired. 



" This will be"" (he wrote the 26th April last to the com- 

 piler of this note) " a work almost entirely new, because our im- 

 mense collections, and the works executed by other anatomists 

 since the first publication, have furnished me with many new 

 facts ; but T see with pleasure, that the system requires little 

 change, and that it continues preferable (at least in my opinion) 

 to those which have been adopted since by some learned men. 

 Nevertheless,*" adds he, '* 1 by no means renounce my great 

 Comparative Anatomy (if I live), for which I have already a 

 thousand drawings." This project, which was always present 

 to his imagination, and for which he had laboured forty years, 

 seemed to him necessary for the completion of all his works ; 

 but the melancholy doubt expressed in this letter (if I live) has 

 been too soon verified ! The homage most worthy to be paid to 

 the glory of Cuvier, will be the publication of these drawings 

 and his great Comparative Anatomy. Thus this man, whom the 

 entire of Europe admires for his surprising fertility of genius, 

 left unpublished works so immense, they might be supposed the 

 labour of a whole lifetime. 



Did this attention, so laboriously directed to Natural History, 

 exclude in him all other studies ? — Certainly not ! Read the 

 eloges he delivered, as perpetual Secretary to the Academy of 

 Sciences, and in which he reviews so many men, and so many 

 different subjects ! 



Thus, for example, his eloge of Adanson proves, that only a 

 naturalist of the first order could have written it ; while those 

 of Bonnet, or of Priestley, shew that he was well informed in 

 all branches of human knowledge. Everywhere in these classi- 

 cal memoirs we find interspersed the most profound reflections 

 on the progress of science, and the most striking allusions to 

 human nature, and the social state of the period. But, above 

 all, there shines forth that love of truth, that feeling of the dig- 



3 



