THE MALAY TAPIR. 



"I at length found myself as if placed in a charnel-house, 

 surrounded by mutilated fragments of many hundred skeletons 

 of more than twenty kinds of animals, piled confusedly around 

 me. The task assigned me was to restore them all to their 

 original position. At the voice of comparative anatomy every 

 bone and fragment of a bone resumed its place." 



Cuvier. 



Few incidents in the annals of natural history 

 have been more interestinor and far-reachinor in their 



o o 



results than the sagacious discovery by which the 

 genius of Cuvier — the Columbus of the antediluvian 

 world — opened the door of a vast treasure house, of 

 whose very existence men had scarcely even dreamed. 

 His attention having been attracted by the great 

 number of bones which were being continually 

 unearthed in the gypsum quarries of Montmartre, he 

 examined load after load of relics, and succeeded in 

 demonstrating that they were the remains, not ot 

 recent animals, but of extinct species abundant ages 

 before the Deluge. The science of palaeontology 

 (the study of extinct forms of life) became established, 

 and the patient labours of savants working in all 

 parts of the globe were rewarded with the successive 

 discovery of new marvels. 



In the Isle of Wight alligators had basked in 

 Eocene sunshine. Huge zeuglodon whales seventy 



