148 HISTORY OF THE WORKS OF CUVIER. 



tlins to substitute a few words for a complete description ; of Laving to say nothing 

 of each species but what is proper to it ; of being able to supply, by its place 

 alone, all that it has in cohiraon with all the rest of the kingdom ; but we also 

 perceive that, for method to aftbrd this advantage, it is necessary both that all 

 its groiq)S should be rigorously subordinated among one another, and that each 

 of them should comprise only beings of the same structure. 



Groups well constituted, alone admit of general propositions. "Without gen- 

 eral propositions there can be no method; without method no brevity; the high- 

 est meiit of all science in Avhich the number of facts is immense, as it is in every 

 branch of the history of the beings of nature. A genus, a family, an order, ill- 

 constituted, stands in the way of every general proposition relating to that genus, 

 family, or order. Thus, by placing the siren and the eel in the same genus, 

 Gmelin rendered it impossible to say anything general upon that genus ; by 

 placing the cuitle-fisli and the frcsli-wcder pohjp in the same order, he made it 

 impossible to say anything general upon that order ; and by placing the mol- 

 lusks, the ivorms, arid the zoophytes in the same class, Linnseus had rendered every 

 general proposition relative to that class impossible, &c. 



B}' means of well-constituted groups, then, we are enabled to say, at one time, 

 for all the species they contain, what it would have been necessary, otherwise, to 

 ]-epeat as many times as there had been species remaining dispersed and detached. 

 But, among all these groiq)S, and under the point of view with which I am here 

 concerned, the genera have an importance which is proper to themselves. It is, 

 that being t\\e first approximation of spjecks, all the rest of the scaffolding is, so to 

 say, founded upon them, and an ill-constructed genus would suffice to break the 

 imiiy of a family, of an order, of an entire class. Besides, being nearer to the 

 sjjecies, the more they shall combine only such species as are conformable with 

 one another, the less there will remain to say for each of them ; and it is herein 

 that may be seen all the inconvenience of those large genera, into which, even 

 of late, so many incongruous species have been thrust, and all the advantage of 

 intersecting those genera by suh genera — a happj' expedient which forestalls con- 

 fusion, by approximating in a closer manner the species which present resem- 

 blances more particular or more intimate. ****** 



But all this work of genera, suh-genera, &c., of which we have been ajDcak- 

 ing, supposes a work not less considerable, the positive establishment, namely, 

 of species — a point in which the animal kingdom presented not less confusion 

 than in all the others. It was not sufficient to have remodelled or created almost 

 all the divisions of that kingdom ; it was incumbent on M. Cuvier to revise all 

 the species, to revise them one by one, and even their synonyms; for sometimes 

 several were confounded under the same name, sometimes a single one passed, 

 under different names, for several ; and this criticism of so many names, imposed 

 right or wrong, on such a number of species, was assuredly neither the part of 

 the work which offered least difficulty to the author, nor that which has saved 

 his successors least embarrassment. It suffices, in effect, to cast the eyes on the 

 works upon natural history which have appeared since the first edition of the 

 Itegne animal, to see the happy fruits which have resulted from these labors 

 upon synonyms of which I now speak, and that art of establishing divisions in 

 the comprehensive genera of which I had been previously speaking. 



I liave said, with reference to hranches, and again with reference to classes, 

 that each of these groups is definitely circumscribed ; as much may be said of all 

 other groups in every degree. Linnffius had pronounced that " nature makes no 

 leaps;" and Bonnet, that " the chain of beings is but one continuous line." The 

 very reverse of these propositions would be much more exact. The truth is, that 

 the different groups are separated from one another by intervals more or less 

 m.arkcd and profound ; and there is, in the very organization of the animals, an 

 evident reason for all these intervals. 



The organization of an aniural is only, in effect, a certain combination of organs; 



