MEMOIR OF CUVIEH *. 



IN every department of Science we have occa- 

 sionally seen " bright minds" appearing, which seem- 

 ed as it were to have condensed the information and 

 discoveries of their predecessors, and, by one great 

 bound, to have left them immeasurably distant, re- 

 moving a gloomy covering from some portion which 

 at once acted as a key to the rest ; while the labours 

 of the next half century would make little farther 

 advance, and the facts which had been accumulating 

 would remain to be again simultaneously employed 

 in penetrating yet deeper into the mechanism and 

 design of this world, and its many living inhabitants. 



Until the commencement of the present century, 

 Natural History may be said to have been the most 

 backward of the sciences, being more cultivated by 

 the enthusiasm of a few, than directed practically to 

 the benefit of mankind, by its connexion with neces- 

 saries, comforts, or luxuries. Those sciences which 

 had already been found of importance in the economy 



* We have to acknowledge our obligations for the prin- 

 cipal facts and details in the present sketch, to the elo- 

 quent memoir from the pen of Baron Pasquier, translated 

 for the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, and an in- 

 \eresting volume lately published by Mrs Lee. 



