120 Analysis of Scientific Books. 
grey mullet. Thislatter is a sea fish, and an inhabitant of the Medi- 
terranean ; though, as we formerly remarked, it can live in fresh water ; 
and since this is a decided fresh water formation, here is a remarkable 
fact in proof of what we have already advanced on the uncertainty 
which attends this subject, and which, if Mons. Blainville had not 
been so strenuous a theorist, might have led him to be more cautious 
in many of his decisions on this subject. 
The basin of Paris has been so thoroughly described by Cuvier and 
Brongniart, that little has been left for our author to do; and that des- 
cription is also known to every one sufficiently, to render it unneces= 
sary for us to enter into any details respecting it. These specimens are 
not numerous, and they are generally very imperfect and ill preserved. 
As our geological readers must know, they have been described by 
Lamanon, Faujas de St. Fond, and de la Metherie, as well as by 
Cuvier. The species are limited to seven, and they are all so ill de- 
fined that no very satisfactory conjecture respecting them has yet been 
made. We shall not quote what has been said, as it is of no mo- 
ment in the present review of Mons, Blainville. 
Yet we must be indulged in one remark on Cuvier himself in this 
case; professing, at the same time, that respect for his attainments 
which it is almost superfluous to profess. When the fishes of Veste- 
nu nuova were first described, it was the fashion to suppose that the 
world had been turned upside down, and inside out, and if there were 
two ways of explaining a fact, itseemed to be the fashion and the am- 
bition to reject the easiest and most natural solution, for the sake of 
adopting what was marvellous, incredible, or impossible. This has 
indeed been one of the leading diseases of /geology and geologists.— 
Because it was impossible that obsidian and pumice could be formed 
by water, they were to be aqueous productions: because the identity 
of volcanic rocks and trap rocks was so absolute that we could 
almost suppose we had seen the latter formed by the same class of 
fires which produced the former, it was resolved that they were gene- 
vated from water. Thus, at Vestenu nuova, because there was no 
difficulty whatever that the crowd of fishes which inhabit, or inhabited, 
the Mediterranean should have been elevated from the bottom of the 
sea, entangled in its mud, and indurated in rock, just as they have 
been before our very eyes in Iceland, it became necessary to collect 
them from the four quarters of the globe. The simple solution was 
not marvellous enough, and the dreams of Volta and his party have 
been triumphantly repeated and re-echoed, in our own clearer day, 
by those who prefer doubt and difficulty, to conviction and facility, 
and would rather that truth should not be attained than attain it by 
the easy road which all may apprehend. 
Of this, we fear, we must accuse Cuvier himself in the case of 
Pacilia vivipara, (as he chooses to suppose it,) of the Paris basin, a fish 
figured by Bloch, and a native of Surinam, For what possible pur- 
pose should we resort to Surinam for a fish for this situation? The 
