RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 87 



seventeen years, in their bigoted devotion to the 

 letter of the Sy sterna Natura, have now flown to the 

 opposite extreme. They have invested his memory 

 with a universality of talents almost superhuman ; 

 and are now ready to bow to his authority with that 

 blind and implicit homage they formerly paid at 

 the shrine of Linnaeus. It may, therefore, surprise 

 such persons, to be told that, in the investigation and 

 knowledge of recent quadrupeds, M. Cuvier has been 

 fully equalled by the illustrious Geoffroy St. Hilaire ; 

 that his system of Ornithology is inferior to that of 

 Temminck, and is withal so defective, that it has 

 called forth an exposition from one of the first 

 zoologists of Europe * ; in short, that it has never 

 made one convert. That in the anatomy of the Mol- 

 lusca and soft animals, he was not only preceded, 

 but greatly surpassed, both by the celebrated Poli 

 and the incomparable Savigny-j-; while, in their 

 arrangement, he is confessedly inferior to Lamarck ± ; 

 and finally, that the whole of the entomology of the 

 Regne Animal is avowedly from the pen of Latreille. 

 If the fame of M. Cuvier, therefore, reposed upon 

 his talents as a zoologist, or as a classifier, that fame 

 would not outlive the present day, for his system 

 has been already shaken to its very foundations. 

 No ; it is the transcendent genius he has shown as a 

 geologist and comparative anatomist, in his splendid 



* Sulla Seconda Edizione del Regno Animate del Barone 

 Cuvier. Osservationi de Carlo Luciano Bonaparte, Principe 

 de Musignano. Bologna, 1830. 8vo. 



f" J. C. Savigny. Memoires sur les Animaux sans Verte« 

 bres. Paris, 1815, 1816. 2 parts, 8vo. 



\ See also, Hora? Entom. p. 837. &c. 

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