fossils were mere " sports of Nature," sometimes bearing more or 

 less resemblance to living animals, but still only an accidental (!) 

 resemblance, had been abandoned by Leibnitz, Buffon, and Pallas ; 

 and that Daubenton had actually compared the fossil bones of 

 quadrupeds with those of living forms; while Camper declared 

 his opinion that some of these remains belonged to extinct species 

 of quadrupeds. 



It is to Cuvier, however, that the world owes the first 

 systematic application of the science of comparative anatomy, 

 which he himself had done so much to place on a sound basis, to 

 the study of the bones of fossil animals. He paid great attention 

 to the relative shapes of animals, and the different developments 

 of the same kind of bones in various animals, and especially to 

 the nature of their teeth. So great did his experience and know- 

 ledge become, that he rarely failed in naming an animal from a 

 part of its skeleton. He appreciated more clearly than others 

 before him the mutual dependence of the various parts of an 

 animal's organisation. "The organism," he said, "forms a con- 

 nected unity, in which the single parts cannot change without 

 modifications in the other parts." 



It will hardly be necessary to give examples of this now well- 

 known truth ; but, just to take one case : the elephant has a 

 long proboscis with which it can reach the ground, and conse- 

 quently its neck is quite short ; but take away the long proboscis, 

 and you would seriously interfere with the relation of various 

 parts of its structure to each other. How, then, could it reach 

 or pick up anything lying on the ground ? Other changes would 

 have to follow : either its legs would require to be shortened, 

 or its neck to be lengthened. In every animal, as in a 

 complex machine, there is a mutual dependence of the different 

 parts. 



