130 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



of i\\e fantastic geology; and it was agfiin these remains wliich, in the Lands of 

 M. Cuvier, furnished the results the most evident and the laws best ascertained 

 of i\iG positive geology. The researches of M. Cuvier were principally directed 

 to the fossil bones of quadrupeds — a part of the animal kingdom till then little 

 studied under this new point of view, but the study of which was calculated to 

 lead to consequences nuxch more precise and decisive than that of any other 

 class. 



I have already mentioned the large fossil bones discovered at different epochs, 

 and the absnrd ideas of giants, which were renewed at each discovery which was 

 made of them. Daubenton was the first to overthrow all these ideas ; it was he 

 who first ajjplied comparative anatomy to the determination of the remains in 

 question ; but, as he himself avows, this science was as yet far from being suffi- 

 ciently advanced to furnish, in all cases and with sufficient certainty, the species 

 or genus of animal to which an unknown and isolated bone might appertain, and 

 yet such was the problem to be solved. The memoir in which Daubenton 

 attempted for the first time the solution of this important problem was of the 

 date of 1762. 



In 1769 Pallas published his first memoir on the fossil hones of Siberia. It 

 was not without surprise that the demonstration was here seen of the fact that 

 the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus — animals which at present live 

 only under tlie torrid zone — had heretofore inhabited the most northern portions 

 of our continents. The second memoir of Pallas could not but excite still more 

 wonder, for he there reports the fact, which could scarcely seem crediljlc a+, 

 that time, that a rhinoceros had been found entire in the frozen earth with its 

 skin and flesh — a fact since renewed, as is known to all, in the elephant discov- 

 ered in 1806 on the shores of the Glacial sea, and so well preserved that dogs 

 and bears devoured its flesh and disputed its remains with one another. 



The impulse once communicated by Pallas, the relics of animals of the south 

 were soon found, not only in the countries of the north, but in all the regions of 

 the old as well as new world. Buffon, from tlie.se facts, hastened to deduce his 

 hypothesis of the gradual refrigeration of the polar regions and of the succes- 

 sive migration of animals from tlie north to the south. But the last fact observed 

 by Pallas, and which has just been cited, had already overthrown this assump- 

 tion. T^hat fact effectually demonstrated, in the most formal manner, that the 

 refrigeration of the globe, far from having been gradual, had, on the contrary, 

 necessarily been sudden, instantaneous, without any gradation ; it demonstrated 

 that the same instant which destroyed the animals in question had rendered the 

 country of their habitat glacial ; for had they not been frozen as soon as killed 

 it is evident that they could not have descended to us with their flesh and skin 

 and every part in perfect preservation. The Inqiothesis of gradual refrigeration 

 being thus untenable, Pallas substituted that of an irruption of water ctjming 

 from the southeast — an irruption which, he maintained, would have transported 

 into the north the animals of India ; but this second hypothesis was not more 

 happy than the first, for the fossil animals are very different from those of India, 

 and indeed from all animals now living — a final fact more extraordinary still 

 than all which preceded it, and which it was reserved for M. Cuvier to place in 

 the clearest light. 



The fact of an ancient creation of animals entirely distinct from the existing 

 creation, and long since entirely lost, is the fundamental fact on which rest the 

 most evident proofs of the revolutions of the globe. It cannot, therefore, be 

 without interest to observe how the idea of this fact, assuredly the most extra- 

 ordinary which scientific research has been enabled to discover and to prove, 

 had its first rise, its subsequent development, and final confirmation. 



We have seen how, toward the end of the sixteenth century, Bernard Palissy 

 had ventured, first among the moderns, to maintain that the bones, the impres- 

 sions, the fossil shells, so long regarded as casual freaks of nature, were the 



