132 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



forth renewed surprise <anfl admiration on tlie part of Lis contemporaries. In this 

 first memoir he does not confine liisnself to demonstrating that the fossil elephant 

 is a distinct species from the existing species — that it is a species extinct and 

 lost ; he expressly declares that the greatest step which could be made towards 

 the perfection of the theory of the earth, would be to prove that none of those 

 animals whose remains are found dispersed over nearly all points of the globe, 

 any longer exist. Pie adds that what he then established in regard to the 

 cJe])liant he would soon establish in a not less incontestable manner in regard to 

 the fossil, rliinoceros, hear, and deer, all of them species equally distinct from 

 living species, all of them equally lost. Finally he concludes with the following 

 remarkable words, in which he seemed to announce all that he has since dis- 

 covered : " If it be asked why w'e find so many remains of unknown animals, 

 while we find none of which it can be said that they belong to species that we 

 know, it will be seen how probable it is that they have all pertained to the 

 creatures of a world anterior to our own ; to creatures destroyed by some catas- 

 trophe of the globe ; to creatures whose place has been filled by those which 

 exist to-day." 



Thus the idea of an entire creation of animals anterior to the actual creation, 

 the idea of an entire creation destroyed and lost had at last l)een fully conceived; 

 and had found an utterance w'hich proved to be a final solution of the doubts 

 which, for a century, had so strongly occupied the human mind. 



But, in order to transform into a positive result views thus vast and elevated, 

 it was necessary to assemble from all quarters the remains of the lost animals, 

 to pass them in review, to study them under this new aspect ; it was necessary to 

 compare them all, one after the other, Avith the remains of living animals ; and, 

 first of all, it was necessary to create and determine the art itself by which this 

 comparison was to be made. 



Now, for a right conception of all the difficulties of this new method, this new 

 art, it is sufficient to remark that the debris of the animals in question, \\\e fossil 

 hones, are almost always isolated and dispersed ; that often the bones of several 

 species, and those the most diverse, are mingled in confusion ; that almost always 

 these bones are mutilated, broken, reduced to fragments. It w'as requisite, there- 

 fore, to refer each bone to the species to which it pertained ; to reconstruct, if 

 possible, the complete skeleton of each species, without omiting any of the 

 pieces which were its own, without intercalating any which were foreign to it. 

 Let us now represent to ourselves this confused intermingling of mutilated and 

 imperfect relics assembled together by M. Ouvier ; let us conceive each bone, 

 each portion of a bone, taking its place under his skilful hand, each uniting 

 itself to the bone or portion of bone to which it had pertained ; let us 

 observe all these species of animals, destroyed for so many ages, thus rising 

 before us in their various forms, with each character, each attribute restored, and 

 we shall scarcel}^ realize that we are witnessing a simple anatomical operation, 

 but rather a sort of resurrection ; nor will it abate anything of the prodigy that 

 it is a resurrection effected at the voice of science and of geinus. 



I say at the voice of science. The metliod employed by M. Cuvier for this 

 wonderful reconstruction is, in effect, but the application of the general rules of 

 comparative anatomy to the determination of fossil hones. And these rules 

 themselves are a not less grand, less admirable discovery than the surprising 

 results to which they have led. 



It has been seen above how a rational principle, that of the subordination of 

 organs, everywbere applied, everywhere reproduced in establishing the groups 

 of the method, had changed the face of the classification of the animal king- 

 dom. The principle which presided at the reconstruction of lost species is 

 that of the correlation of forms, a principle by means of which each part of an 

 animal may be given by each other part, and the whole animal by a single part. 

 In a mechanism as complex, and yet as essentially a unit as that which constitutes 



