144 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
and that by assiduous researches for nearly thirty 
years* he has collected skeletons of all the genera 
and sub-genera of quadrupeds, with those of many 
species in certain genera, and several individuals of 
certain species. With such means it was easy for him 
to multiply his comparisons, and to verify in all their 
details the applications of his laws. 
Such is the famous law of correlation of parts, of 
Cuvier. It could be easily understood by the layman, 
and its enunciation added vastly to the popular repu- 
tation and prestige of the young science of comparative 
anatomy.t In his time, and applied to the forms 
*In the first edition of the 7éorie he says fifteen years, writing in 
1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to thirty. 
+ De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier’s law and of his 
assumptions ; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says : 
‘‘ Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. 
G. Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in 
a kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then 
almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections 
which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a 
comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without 
having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism 
which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, 
because he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science 
of organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did. 
Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his 
assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a 
skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously corre- 
lated inan animal. It isa great thing if the memory, aided by astrong 
imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in 
an animal well known and studied even to satiety ; but foran unknown 
animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the 
anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anato- 
mists like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d’Azyr, Blumenbach, Soem- 
mering, and Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier 
would have been himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at 
his word, and besides it is this assertion which will remain formulated 
in the mouths of the ignorant, and which has already made many 
persons believe that it is possible to answer the most difficult and 
often insoluble problems in palzontology, without having made any 
preliminary study, with the aid of dividers, and, on the other hand, 
