142 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
in the preliminary remarks in his well-known “ Essay 
on the Theory of the Earth” (1812), which was fol- 
lowed in 1821 by his Descours sur les Révolutions de la 
Surface du Globe. 
It was written in a more attractive and vigorous 
style than the writings of Lamarck, more elegant, 
concise, and with less repetition, but it is destitute of 
the philosophic grasp, and is not the work of a pro- 
found thinker, but rather of a man of talent who 
was an industrious collector and accurate describer of 
fossil bones, of a high order to be sure, but analyti- 
cal rather than synthetical, of one knowing well the 
value of carefully ascertained and demonstrated facts, 
but too cautious, if he was by nature able to do so, 
to speculate on what may have seemed to him too 
few facts. It is also the work of one who fell in with 
the current views of the time as to the general bear- 
ing of his discoveries on philosophy and theology, 
believing as he did in the universality of the Noa- 
chian deluge. 
Like Lamarck, Cuvier independently made use of 
the comparative method, the foundation method in 
paleontology ; and Cuvier’s well-known “ law of corre- 
lation of structures,” so well exemplified in the verte- 
brates, was a fresh, new contribution to philosophical 
biology. 
In his Dyzscours, speaking of the difficulty of 
determining the bones of fossil quadrupeds, as com- 
pared with fossil shells or the remains of fishes, he 
remarks : * 
* The following account is translated from the fourth edition of the 
Ossemens fossiles, vol. I., 1834, also the sixth edition of the Discours, 
