12 Baron Cuvier on the state of Natural History. 



thousands that each traveller brings them home from warm cli- 

 mates. The royal cabinet alone at present possesses more than 

 25,000 species ; and, according to the most moderate estimates, 

 there are at least as many in the other cabinets of Europe which 

 it does not possess. M. de Latreille, who has done more than any 

 one else in advancing the knowledge of this class of animals, 

 has calculated that a person intending to describe all that have 

 been collected, would require thirty years of very assiduous la- 

 bour ; and, in the course of that time, if the zeal of travellers 

 is not relaxed, there will have arrived an equal number of new 

 species. And, let it be observed, I only speak hei*e of mere ex- 

 ternal descriptions. With respect to the internal organization, 

 two or three of these beings which the vulgar treat with con- 

 tempt, iTiight occupy the whole of a man^s life. 



We cannot look without admiration on that work on the ana- 

 tomy of a single caterpillar to which Lyonnet devoted ten years. 

 A similar examination of the Maybug, recently made by a young 

 naturalist, M. Strauss, is not less calculated to confound the 

 imagination. In this small body, scarcely an inch long, there may 

 be counted 306 hard pieces, serving as an envelope, 494 muscles 

 for moving them, 24 pairs of nerves for animating them, all di- 

 vided into innumerable filaments ; 48 pairs of tracheae not less 

 divided, for carrying air and life into this inextricable tissue. 

 The delicacy and regularity of the whole afford a delightful 

 spectacle. Down to the beautiful arrangement of the colours, 

 all seems calculated to please the eye of man, of man who per- 

 haps never before saw it since the creation. 



What can be more calculated to excite our reflections than 

 the object of so many beauties lavished by Nature on the most 

 hidden of her works, those which are most withdrawn from our 

 view..'* Those thousands of fishes, for example, whose scales 

 shine with the splendour of gold and of all the precious stones, 

 in which all the colours of the rainbow are displa3'ed, reflected 

 in bands, spots, undulating and angular lines, always regular, 

 and always of admirably combined or contrasted shades. For 

 whose pleasure were those wonders destined, which the depths 

 of the ocean conceal from us ? They cannot even be seen by 

 each other, for the light scarcely penetrates into the depths 

 where they live. The more one reflects, the stronger becomes the 



