RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 87 
seventeen years, in their bigoted devotion to the 
letter of the Systema Nature, have now flown to the 
opposite extreme. They have invested his memory 
with a universality of talents almost superhuman ; 
and are now ready to bow to his authority with that 
blind and implicit homage they formerly paid at 
the shrine of Linneus. It may, therefore, surprise 
such persons, to be told that, in the investigation and 
knowledge of recent quadrupeds, M. Cuvier has been 
fully equalled by the illustrious Geoffroy St. Hilaire ; 
that his system of Ornithology is inferior to that of 
Temminck, and is withal so defective, that it has 
ealled forth an exposition from one of the first 
zoologists of Europe*; in short, that it has never 
made one convert. That in the anatomy of the Mol- 
Zusca and soft animals, he was not only preceded, 
but greatly surpassed, both by the celebrated Poli 
and the incomparable Savigny+; while, in their 
arrangement, he is confessedly inferior to Lamarck {; 
and finally, that the whole of the entomology of the 
Régne Animal is avowedly from the pen of Latreille. 
If the fame of M. Cuvier, therefore, reposed upon 
his talents as a zoologist, or as a classifier, that fame 
would not outlive the present day, for his system 
has been already shaken to its very foundations. 
No; it is the transcendent genius he has shown as a 
geologist and comparative anatomist, in his splendid 

* Sulla Seconda Edizione del Regno Animale del Barone 
Cuvier. Osservationi de Carlo Luciano Bonaparte, Principe 
de Musignano. Bologna, 1830. 8vo. 
+ J. C. Savigny. Mémoires sur les Animaux sans Verté- 
bres. Paris, 1815, 1816. 2 parts, 8vo. 
t See also, Hore Entom. p. 837. &c. 
G 4 
