MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 133 



tlie animal frame, it is evident that all the parts must necessarily be constructed 

 one with referenc(; to the others, so as to correspond, to athipt themselves to one 

 another, to form, in a word, by their asseml)lage, one beiny, one unique system. 

 A single one of these jiarts, therefore, cannot change its form without necessitating 

 a change in form of all tlie others. Hence from the form of one part may be 

 deduceil the form of all the other parts. 



Suppose a carnivorous animal ; it will necessarily have the organs of sense 

 and of movement; the claws, teeth, stonia(;h, intestines, adaj)ted for scenting, 

 seizing, tearing, digesting its animal prey, and all these conditions will be 

 rigorously linked with one another ; for, if one be wanting, the others w^ould be 

 without efiect, without result ; the creature could not subsist. Suppose, on the 

 other hand, an herbivorous animal ; all this assemblage of conditions will have 

 changed. The teeth, the feet, the stomach, the intestines, the organs of move- 

 ment and of sense, will all have assumed new forms, and these new forais will 

 always be proportioned and related one to the others. From the form of a sin- 

 gle one of these parts, therefore, from that of the teeth alone, for example, we 

 may infer, and infer with certainty, the form of the feet, that of the jaws, that 

 of the stomach, that of the intestines. 



All the parts, all the organs, are deducible, then, one from the other ; and 

 such is the rigor, such the infallibility of this deduction, that M. Cuvier has been 

 often known to recognize an animal by a single bone, nay by the facet of a 

 bone ; that he has been known to determine unknown genera and species from 

 a few broken 1)ones, and this from such or such a bone taken at random, recon- 

 structing in this way the entire animal from a single one of its parts, and causing 

 it to reappear, as at v.ill, from each of them ; results which cannot be recalled 

 without recalling in effect all that admiration, mingled with surprise, which they 

 at first inspired, and which is not yet exhausted. 



That precise and rigorous method of distinguishing bones confounded together — 

 of refeiTing each bone to its species ; of reconstructing the entire animal from 

 some of its parts — that method once conceived, it was no longer by isolated 

 species but by groups and masses that these extinct populations, antique monu- 

 ments of the revolutions of the globe, reappeared. An idea might then be 

 formed not only of their extraordinary appearance, but of the prodigious multi- 

 tude of their species. It was seen that they com})rised creatures of all classes, 

 quadi'upeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, down to Crustacea, mollusks, and zoophj'tes. 

 Kor, though I speak here only of animals, docs the study of fossil vegetables 

 fin-nish consequences less curious than those drawn from the animal kingdom. 

 All these organized beings, all these first occupants of the globe, are distinguished 

 by their proper characters, and often by characters the most singular and 

 grotesque. 



Among the quadrupeds, for examide, we first observe the pcdmotlicriumj the 

 anoplothcrhim, those strange specimens of pachydennata, discovered by M. 

 Cuvier in the environs of Paris, and of which none bearing this ]')eculiar charac- 

 ter has descended to our times. Afterwards comes the niammoth, that elephant 

 of Siberia, covered with long hairs and a thick wool ; the mastodon, an animal 

 almost as large as the mammoth, and whose teeth, armed with points, long 

 caused it to be regarded as a carnivorous elephant, together w'ith those enormous 

 sloths, the mcgatlicrkun, the mcgahiii/x, animals of which the existing sjx'cies do 

 not exceed the size of a dog, while some of those which are lost equalled the 

 largest rhinoceros. Still more extraordinary were the reptiles of those first ages 

 of the world,* whether from their gigantic jiroportions, for there were lizards as 

 large as whales, or from the singularity of their structure, for some; had the aspect 

 of the cctaccu or marine mammifers, and others the neck and beak of birds, and 

 even a kind of wing. 



* Such as tbe meffalosaurus, which was more thau GO feet iu length ; the irldhyosaiinis ani 

 the. picsiosaurus, wliosciii(;mbersarecall(;d thoseofthc crtacca ; thi'ptcrodiictiih, wliit-h liave a 

 very loug projection from tiie auterior extremity, bearing a inembraue or soit of wing. 



