146 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
Cuvier himself applied his methods to many forms from 
the early tertiary or older formations he would have 
failed. If, for instance, he had had before him the 
disconnected fragments of an eocene tillodont he 
would undoubtedly have referred a molar tooth to 
one of his pachyderms, an incisor tooth to a rodent, 
and a claw bone to a carnivore. The tooth of a 
Hesperornis would have given him no possible hint of 
the rest of the skeleton, nor its swimming feet the 
slightest clue to the ostrich-like sternum or skull. 
And yet the earnest belief in his own methods led 
Cuvier to some of his most important discoveries.” 
Let us now examine from Cuvier’s own words in 
his Dzscours, not relying on the statements of his 
expositors or followers, just what he taught notwith- 
standing the clear utterances of his older colleague, 
Lamarck, whose views he set aside and either ignored 
or ridiculed.* 
He at the outset affirms that nature has, like man- 
kind, also had her intestine wars, and that “the 
surface of the globe has been much convulsed by 
successive revolutions and various catastrophes.” 
As first proof of the revolutions on the surface of 
the earth he instances fossil shells, which in the 
lowest and most level parts of the earth are “almost 
everywhere in such a perfect state of preservation 
that even the smallest of them retain their most 
* The following statement of Cuvier’s views is taken from Jame- 
son’s translation of the first Essay on the Theory of the Earth, ‘which 
formed the introduction to his Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles,” 
the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the pub- 
lication of the /7ydrogéologte. The original I have not seen, but I 
have compared Jameson’s translation with the sixth edition of the 
Discours (1820). 
