40 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. ]\o\. XXVII, 



Thev quote "les grands & magnifiques Ouvrages qu' Aristotle, Pline, 

 Soliu & Elian ont composes" chiefly for the purpose of refuting or cor- 

 recting the opinions of those worthies; and they replace much classical and 

 mediaeval rubbish by solid fact. 



I'he plan of the work is very well carried out. The external appearance 

 and anatomy of animals pertaining to 51 genera of vertebrates are figured 

 and described. Of these, 21 genera are mammals, distributed among 15 

 families and 6 orders, and including various ruminants, carnivores, two 

 genera of monkeys, a beaver, porcupine, hedgehog, seal, etc. Judged by 

 later standards the figures of the animals are of uneven merit, some bordering 

 on the grotesque, but all of evident sincerity. The anatomical drawings, 

 though very wooden and in spite of the committee's efforts not always quite 

 accurate, are at least diagrammatically clear. vSpecial attention is paid to the 

 digestive tract and urinogenital system, and in case of the monkeys the 

 resemblances to and differences from the human anatomy are clearly ex- 

 hibited. 



This work is important because it is a prelude to the more extensive 

 work of Daubenton (in Buffon's 'Histoire Naturelle,') and to comparative 

 anatomy of the Cuvierian iyj^e. It also furnishes another example of the 

 application of the methods of one subject to the data of another, since it 

 applies to the anatomy of the vertebrates the already well developed termi- 

 nology of human anatomy. But this work contained no far-reaching ideas 

 of a general nature, except the very distrust of premature generalizations. 

 Another century was to elapse before comparative anatomy, thus initiated, 

 was to be happily joined to classification by de Blainville. 



BUFFOX AND DAUBENTOX, 1753-1767. 



[History of Quadrupeds]. 



The name of Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716-1799) has a double 

 claim upon the grateful memory of zoologists. First, so Cuvier tells us in 

 his 'Recueil des Eloges Historiques . . . . ' (tome premiere, 1819, pp. 37- 

 80), Daubenton was virtually the founder of the Cabinet of Natural History 

 in the Jardin des Plantes. He seems to have been a born 'museum man,' 

 and to have labored incessantly to establish and develop systematic collec- 

 tions of minerals, fruits, woods, shells, etc., and especially to display them to 

 the best advantage. He improved the methods of preserving and mounting 

 mammals and birds, and Cuvier says that "les depouilles inanimees des 

 quadrupedes et des oiseaux reprirent les apparences de la vie, et presenterent 

 a I'observateur les moindres details de leurs caracteres, en meme temps 



