were conformable to what the teeth had announced, and the teeth to the 

 feet; the bones of the legs and the thighs, and every thing that ought to 

 reunite these two extreme parts were conformable to each other. In one 

 word, each of the species sprung up from one of its elements. Those who 

 will have the patience to follow me in these memoirs, may form some idea 

 of the sensations which I experienced, in thus restoring by degrees these 

 ancient monuments of mighty revolutions. This volume will afford much 

 interest to naturalists, independent of geology, shewing them, by multi- 

 plied examples, the strictness of the laws of co-existence, which elevate 

 zoology to the rank of the rational sciences, and which, leading us to 

 abandon the vain and arbitrary combinations that had been decorated with 

 the name of systems, will conduct us at last to the only study worthy of 

 our age — to that of the natural and necessary relations, which connect 

 together the diff'erent parts of all organised bodies. But geology will lose 

 nothing by this accessary application of the facts contained in this volume : 

 and thus the numerous families of unknown beings, buried in the most 

 frequented part of Europe, offer a vast field for meditation." 



The reader will not fail to be struck with the expression of confidence 

 which is uttered by Cuvier in the above passage, on the security which 

 he felt in appealing to the immutable laws of nature, as the light which 

 would enable him to trace the most beautiful of systems of harmony and 

 order in this apparent chaotic mass of fragments; and he does not hesi- 

 tate to enter further into detail on the nature of those immutable laws 

 prescribed to living beings, to which he devoted the worship of his 

 earliest and latest years. 



In the following passage Cuvier has more fully explained what he de- 

 nominates " the immutable laws prescribed to living beings:" — "Every 

 organised being forms a whole and entire system, of which all the parts 

 mutually correspond and co-operate, to produce the same definite action, 

 by a reciprocal re-action; none of these parts can change, without a 

 change of the others also. Thus, if the intestines of an animal are 

 organised in a manner only to digest fresh flesh, it is necessary that his 

 jaws should be constructed to devour the prey, his claws to seize and tear 

 it, his teeth to divide the flesh, and the whole system of his organs of 

 motion to follow and overtake it, and of his organs of sense to perceive 

 it at a distance. It is necessary, also, that he should have seated in his 

 brain the instinct to hide himself and spread snares for his victim: such 

 are the general conditions of a carnivorous regimen ; every carnivorous 

 animal must infallibly unite them — without them the species could not 

 subsist. But, under these general conditions, there are particular ones 

 with respect to the size of the species, and the abode of the prey for 

 which each animal is disposed." 



