CUVIER. 133 



even in the midst of a raging pestilence, were eager 

 to offer upon his tomb their last tribute of affection and 

 admiration. 



But it was not among the companions alone of his 

 labours and his glory that this homage of love and 

 sorrow was paid. In every corner of his native land, 

 teeming with intellectual wealth, and splendid with 

 immortal names, the loss of their naturalist, their 

 legislator and their instructor, was bewailed as a national 

 calamity. The remotest corners of his native land, and 

 those in other countries, joined in the general lamenta- 

 tion ; and within the temple of science itself it was felt 

 that one of its chief pillars had fallen. 



A history of Cuvier's labours in the domain of natural 

 history would be the history of natural science in the 

 first half of the nineteenth century. When he formed 

 a system based on the invariable characters of ana- 

 tomical structure instead of external resemblances, he 

 discovered the true basis of a natural classification. He 

 first introduced the division founded on different plans 

 of structure of radiata, mollusca, articulata. and verte- 

 brata; and this has been the basis of all modern 

 improvements in zoology. The grand idea of Cuvier 

 was to discover the plan of created beings by the study 

 and comparison of the intimate structure of their 

 organism. With him, comparative anatomy and z< k il< >i:\ 

 went hand-in-hand, and from their united facte la- 

 deduced the laws of a new science, that of fossil animal 

 life, astonishing the world with the magnitude of his 

 conceptions and the grandeur of his discoveries. 



Linnaeus had included in his class of worms all 



