16 



time since the creation."' A short life, whose whole 

 extent was only thirty-one years, enabled Bichat to 

 give that impulse to animal physiology and anatomy, 

 which is felt at the present day, and opened a wide 

 field for extended and eminently useful investigations : 

 while the prolonged life of the Father of Natural His- 

 tory, though diligently employed, served only to leave 

 behind the rudiments of a " System of Nature" which 

 would require ages to perfect. The patient researches 

 of the illustrious Cuvier, on one single subject, 

 have restored to form and symmetry the original in- 

 habitants of a former world, whose mighty relics are 

 scattered in profusion over the earth's surface, and 

 given us ideas of the vastness of Creative Power and 

 the astonishing results of human industry with mental 

 application : while the no less interesting studies of 

 Brongniart are presenting to our mind's eye and actual 

 observation, the gigantic flora of those ages, which 

 bore in luxuriant exuberance the mighty prototypes 

 ,of our now more humble and pigmy vegetable fonns.f 

 Half a century of constant .experiment unbaffled and 

 undismayed by repeated and severe misfortunes, 

 enabled the Belgian horticulturist, the distinguished 

 Van Mons, amidst the more imperative duties of his 

 profession to establish important facts in vegetable 



* Rapport sur 1'Histoire Naturelle. Jardine's Naturalist's Library. En- 

 tomology Vol. II. p. 72. 



t "Some of the fossil ferns are so similar to those now growing on the sur- 

 face of the earth, that no doubt is entertained, that they are generically the 

 same ; this is the case especially with the Equiseta. Some of the fossil 

 Selaginales are very similar to the Lycopodia of the present day, such as 

 Lycopoditfsfalcatus, which is an oolitic fossil. But the most numerous and 

 remarkable Lycopodial remains, are those gigantic fossils called Lepidoden- 

 dra and Utodendra, some fragments of which measure nearly fifty feet in 

 length \"Burnet's Introd. to Botany, Vol. 1. pp. 339*341. 



