134: MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



And what is still more surprising- is that all these animals did not live at one 

 and the same epoch ; that there were several generations, several populations, 

 so to speak, successively created and destroyed. Of these M. Cuvier has 

 counted as many as three distinctly marked. The first comprised the mollusks, 

 the fishes, the reptiles, all those monstrous reptiles just spoken of; among them 

 were already found some marine mammifers, but no terrestrial mammifer, or 

 scarce! v any, then existed. The second epoch was chiefly characterized by those 

 strange species of pachydermata of the environs of Paris, above mentioned, and 

 it was now only that the terrestrial mammifers began to predominate. The third 

 was the epoch of the mammoth, the mastodon, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, 

 the gigantic sloths. A remarkable fact is that among all these animals there is 

 scarcely one of the quadntmana ; scarcely one of the ape tribe.* And still 

 more remarkable, there was no man ; the human race therefore was neither 

 cotemporaneous with any of these lost species nor with the catastrophes which 

 destroyed them t 



Thus, then, after the age of reptiles, after that of the first terrestrial mammi- 

 fers, after that of the mammoths and mastodons, arrived a fourth epoch, a fourth 

 succession of created beings, that which constitutes the actual population, that 

 which may be called the age of man, for from this age only dates the human 

 species. The creation of the animal kingdom, therelbre, has undergone several 

 interruptions, several successive destructions ; and what is not less wonderful, 

 thouo-h altogether certain, is, that there was an epoch, the first of all, when no 

 oro-anizcd being, no animal, no vegetable existed on the globe. 



All these extraordinary facts are demonstrated by the relations of the remains 

 of organized beings to the strata which form the crust of the globe. Thus there 

 was a first epoch when these beings did not exist, for the primitive or primordial 

 formations contain none of their remains ; the reptiles prevailed in the following 

 epoch, for their remains abound in the formations which succeed the primitive ; 

 the surface of the earth has been several times covered by the seas, and again 

 left dry, for the remains of marine animals cover turn by tm'n the remains of 

 terrestrial animals and are alternately covered by them. 



Thus has science, guided by genius, been enabled to ascend to the most remote 

 epochs of the history of the earth ; to compute and determine those epochs ; to 

 mark both the first moment when organized beings appeared on the globe, and all 

 the variations, modifications, and revolutions they have experienced. It were uuj ust, 

 doubless, to convey the impression that all the proofs of this great history have 

 been collected by M. Cuvier ; but even where others after him have made discoveries 

 in the same field, some portion of glory must redound to him by whose footsteps 

 thev have been guided. It may be said, indeed, that the more valuable those 

 discoveries, the more important all those which shall be made in the future, the 

 more will his renown be enlianced, even as the name of Columbus has been 

 exalted in proportion as the navigators who have come after him have rendered 

 better known the whole extent of his conquest. 



This unknown world opened to naturalists is undoubtedly the most brilliant 

 discovery of M. Cuvier. Yet I do not hesitate to place beside it that other dis- 

 covery, in my eyes not less important, of the true method in natural history. 



The need of methods to our understanding arises equally from the need it has 

 of distinguishing in order to know, and the need it has of generalizing what it 

 knows in order to be able to embrace and clearly to conceive the greatest possi- 



* Since the above was written some remains of apes have been found among fossil bones. 

 See Hint, des truvaux dc M. Cuvier. 



t More recent investigations have led to a diiJ'erent conclusion ; from these it seems to have 

 been establislied that the appearance of man upon earth must be carried back much further 

 than has been generally supposed ; that he witnessed more than one of the catastrophes 

 alluded to, and was obliged to dispute his mundane inheritance with several of the gigantic 

 or ferocious animals of the " third epoch." See Smithsonian Report for 1867, " Man as a cotem- 

 porary of the mammoth, &c." — Tr. 



