Baron Cuvier on the state of Natural History. 5 



bodies have been laid open. Medicine and chemistry have 

 united their efforts to appreciate, in its minutest details, the 

 action of the external elements upon the living being. The 

 different combinations of organs, or what is called the diffe- 

 rent classes and genera, have not been less studied than the 

 general theories. The internal structure of the minutest ani- 

 mals, ascertained by dissection, has been made as Avell known 

 as that of the human being. Each of the organic systems 

 has, in like manner, been submitted to a particular exami- 

 nation. The brain, that index of the intellectual faculties ; the 

 teeth, those signs of the nature and energy of the digestive 

 powers ; the osseous system especially, which is the basis of all 

 the others, and which determines the general forms of animals, 

 have been followed out, even in the smallest species, and in their 

 smallest parts. M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire undertook to demon- 

 strate the identity of the plan on which nature has formed the 

 vertebrate animals. The most dissimilar forms were found by 

 him to be referable to the same model; and, even in monsters 

 themselves, he still found the traces of each point of ossification. 

 It may readily be conceived that after studies like these, 

 no more should be said of external and artificial methods. 

 The old natural history ceased to reign, and a science full of 

 youth and vigour, armed with means entirely new, saw the 

 return of peace lay open to it the world. Its energy has borne 

 witness to this renovation. From all civilized countries ardent 

 young men have darted forth into distant climates. The ice of 

 the pole, the pestilential marshes of the torrid zone, the cruelties 

 of savage nations, have all been braved. Who does not call to 

 mind the sufferings thrice endured by the companions of Ross 

 and Parry ; the horrors to which those of Franklin and Rich- 

 ardson were exposed ; the entire and absolute destruction, by 

 disease, of all Captain Tuckey's expedition on the Zaire ? 

 And how many have been victims ? Peron and Delalande 

 expired, almost within sight of their native land, in consequence 

 of their fatigues in burning climates. Havet was cut off at the 

 moment when he set his foot on the shore of Madagascar, that 

 land of promise, as Commerson called it, but whose approach 

 seems to be guarded by contagion, the most cruel of monsters. 

 Godcfroy was murdered in an insurrection of the ignorant in- 



