142 lloyal Socic/jj. 



of French society. He was well acquainted with ancient literature, 

 and familiar with the principal languages of modern Europe. His 

 memory was singularly accurate and retentive ; and his knowledge 

 of facts, not merely in those sciences which he especially cultivated, 

 but likewise in all other departments of knowledge, and particularly 

 history, was a subject of surprise and admiration to all who knew 

 him. He was also eminently distinguished as a writer of his own 

 language, and his numerous eloges delivered in his capacity of se- 

 cretaire pcrpetuel to the Institut, of which three volumes have been 

 published, if considered as specimens of composition merely, have 

 equalled, if not surpassed, the best examples of a species of elo- 

 quence of which the French nation has just reason to be proud ; but 

 if they be considered as specimens of correct and precise discrimi- 

 nation of the merits of the persons commemorated, as determined by 

 their writings and discoveries, and by the influence which they have 

 exercised upon the progress of knowledge, they may justly be pro- 

 nounced to be unrivalled. It was to this publication that he was in- 

 debted for his place amongst the forty of the Academie Francaise, 

 an honour which he alone, in his own age, enjoyed in conjunction 

 with his place in the Academie des Sciences. 



It is, however, chiefly as a naturalist that Cuvier must be viewed, 

 when we seek to determine his permanent rank amongst the few 

 great men who have effected great revolutions in the sciences which 

 they have cultivated, or have left ineffaceable traces of the influence 

 of their discoveries behind them. The whole animal kingdom, from 

 the most obscure indications of the separation between inanimate and 

 animate existence to the mighty monsters of a former world, has 

 assumed under his hands a systematic arrangement, not founded up- 

 on superficial and unimportant external characters merely, but upon 

 a most careful and laborious observation of the analogies of internal 

 structure. By tracing every organ successively through the whole 

 series of animals; by carefully determining the functions of such 

 organs and their relations to each other; and by considering them in 

 every animal in the first place as an individual, and in the second 

 place with reference to others, he has been enabled to distribute 

 them into species and genera, and families and classes, where every 

 successive step in their arrangement is the result of a legitimate and 

 inductive generalization. It is by such means that he has been ena- 

 bled to convert the science of natural history, at least in the animal 

 kingdom, from being little more than a systematic classification, 

 formed for the purpose of identifying genera and species and with 

 no higher view, into a science of strict and severe induction, founded 

 upon a careful observation and comparison of every fact which ana- 

 tomical and physiological science can detect, and thus to confer upon 

 it a dignity which is only inferior to that of the physical sciences. 



It has resulted also, from his researches, that every animal 

 considered as one of the same genus or species, is not only an 

 individual considered as a whole, but also when considered in 

 all its parts; in other words, that every bone, every muscle, every 

 organ, and every part of its structure is essentially distinguished 



