10 Baron Cuvier on the state of Natural History. 



time that it surpasses them all in the facility which the climate 

 there affords of rearing and studying that magnificent vegetation 

 of warm countries, of which in Europe we see but meagre spe- 

 cimens. 



The noble liberality with which the learned of different nations 

 communicate what they possess, adds still more to the ra- 

 pidity with which science advances. We have already in the 

 Paris Museum the objects collected last year by the English 

 near the North Pole, and those which they have just obtained 

 from their new discoveries at Botany Bay. We have specimens 

 of all the fossils disinterred in Great Britain, Germany, and 

 Italy. Java furnishes nothing to the Dutch of which we do 

 not immediately participate. No jealousy now exists, no other 

 emulation than that of more powerfully contributing to the ge- 

 neral diffusion of knowledge. 



It is through this immense union of efforts, that we are now, 

 it may be said, only beginning to acquire an idea of the riches 

 of organic nature. Linn^us, in 1778, in his general review of 

 vegetables, indicated about 8000 species. There are 25,000 in 

 Wildenow''s System, which was commenced thirty years la- 

 ter. M. Decandolle, in the general system which he is at 

 present drawing up, will describe 40,000 ; and, MM. de 

 Humboldt, Kunth, Martins, and St Hilaire, are preparing rich 

 supplements to it. In a few years the number will have ex- 

 ceeded 50,000. The extraordinary forms which they assume 

 are not less surprising than these numbers ; and certainly Lin- 

 naeus could never have imagined the existence of the Rqfflesia, a 

 parasitic plant, having neither stem nor leaves, and consisting 

 solely of a flower, but of a flower three feet in diameter. It was 

 in the depths of the forests of Sumatra that this plant was a 

 short time ago discovered. 



Buffon estimated the number of existing quadrupeds at about 

 300. M. Desmarest, in a recent work, has counted more than 

 700; and he himself is far from considering his enumera- 

 tion as complete. It was supposed that the large species at 

 least were all known, but India has furnished very large 

 quadrupeds in abundance ; four or five stags, as many bears, 

 two rhinoceroses, and even a tapir, a genus which was sup- 

 posed to exist only in America. It is especially to MM. 



