36 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



of fossil bones, or those whose situation was favour- 

 able for collecting them, to lend their assistance to 

 his undertaking *." These memoirs were collected 

 and published in 1811, in four quarto volumes, 

 forming the great work above alluded to. It is il- 

 lustrated with numerous plates, and the first volume 

 is occupied by a Preliminary Discourse, and an ac- 

 count of the mineralogy around Paris. Six years 

 after, a second edition appeared, increased to five vo- 

 lumes. It is a work of great interest a splendid 

 monument of the persevering research of the au- 

 thor. 



From the nature of the above-mentioned work, it 

 is evident that a great deal of accessory research 

 was necessary. An antiquary of a new kind, he 

 had to decypher and restore these monuments to 

 discover, and place in their primitive order, their 

 scattered fragments to reconstruct the ancient be- 

 ings to which these fragments belonged to repro- 

 duce them with their proportions and characters 

 and, in short, to compare them with the beings at 

 present li ving upon the surface of our earth f . A great 

 portion of the intermediate time between its com- 

 mencement and publication, was therefore devoted 

 to the study of comparative anatomy ; and the fruits 

 of that study we have in various memoirs, and in 

 the " Le9ons d'Anaturnie comparee," a work in fire 



* Advertisement to the 1st edition, 

 f Discours Preliminaire, p. 1. 



