CAENIVOEA 377 



of animal structures, it will be exemplified more particularly 

 in this place, and by the aid of the subjoined cut (fig. 128). 

 The founder of palaeontology thus enunciates the law which 

 he believed to guide effectively his labours of reconstructing 

 extinct species : — 



" Every organized being forms a whole, a single circum- 

 scribed system, the parts of which mutually correspond and 

 concur to the same definitive action by a reciprocal re-action. 

 None of these parts can change without the others also 

 changing, and consequently each part, taken separately, indi- 

 cates and gives all the others."* 



Cuvier did not predicate that law by an a priori method, 

 by any of those supposed short cuts to knowledge, the fallacy 

 of which Bacon so well exposes ; he arrived at the law induc- 

 tively, and after many dissections had revealed to him the 

 facts — of the jaw of the Carnivore being strong by virtue of 

 certain proportions ; of its having a peculiarly shaped and 

 articulated condyle, with a plate of bone of breadth and height 

 adequate for the implantation of muscles, with power to inflict 

 a deadly bite — a process grasped by muscles of such magni- 

 tude as necessitated a certain extent of surface for their 

 origin from the cranium, with concomitant strength and cur- 

 vature of the zygomatic arch ; the facts of the modified occi- 

 put and dorsal spines in relation to vigorous uplifting and 

 retraction of the head when the prey had been griped ; the 

 size and shape of the piercing, lacerating, and trenchant teeth ; 

 the mechanism of the retractile claws, and of the joints of the 

 limb that wielded them ; — it was not until after Cuvier had 

 recognized these facts, and studied them and their correlations 

 in a certain number of typical Camivora, that he felt justified 

 in asserting that " the form of the tooth gives that of the con- 

 dyle, of the blade-bone (s), and of the claws, just as the equa- 

 tion of a curve evolves all its properties ; and exactly as, in 

 * Ossemena Fossiles, 4to, torn. i. (1812), p. 58. 



