4 Baron Cuvier oti the state qf'Nuttiral History. 



when the master was removed, anarchy possessed itself of tlie 

 nomenclature, and the universal language quickly became the 

 language of confusion. 



In reality, Buffon, Daubenton and Pallas, had opened up 

 better paths, by giving more perfect models of descriptions ; and 

 Jussieu had shewn how many more delicate and more numerous 

 relations must be apprehended by him who would pretend to 

 distribute the productions of nature in such a manner as to 

 satisfy the mind. But to change habits that have become 

 general, is to effect a revolution ; and the most necessary revo- 

 lutions do not take place without some circumstance for which 

 it is often necessary to wait a long time. 



On this occasion, it has been better seen how every thing aids 

 the progress of science, even the delays and oppositions which 

 it appears to experience. The events which have disturbed the 

 world, and for a time dried up the external springs from which 

 natural history derived its riches, obliged it to retire within it- 

 self, and subject what it possessed to a new examination, more 

 fertile than the most fortunate career could have been. During 

 this apparent rest, all the parts of the system have been deeply 

 studied ; the interior of animals has been explored ; even mineral 

 substances have been reduced to their mechanical elements. A 

 still more intimate analysis has been made of them by a more im- 

 proved chemistry ; the earth itself, in this interval, has been, 

 it may be said, dissected by geologists ; its depths have been 

 sounded; the order of superposition of the strata which form its 

 envelope has been discovered. In the deficiency of foreign 

 contributions, the interior of the ground on which we walk 

 became the tributary of science. The beings whose remains it 

 encloses have again appeared upon the earth, and have revealed 

 a natural history anterior to that of the present day, different in 

 its forms, and yet subjected to the same laws, and which has 

 given these laws a kind of sanction which no person could have 

 expected. Botanists did not accumulate in their herbariums so 

 many plants ; but with glass in hand, they demonstrated more 

 and more the intimate structure of the fruit and seed, the va- 

 ri(»us relations which connect the parts of the flower, and the 

 indications which these relations furnish for a natural distri- 

 bution. The most delicate parts of the tissue of organised 



