CHAPTEE II 



GEORGES CUVIER AND LES REVOLUTIONS DU GLOBE 



Creation of comparative anatomy and palaeontology The gradual 

 perfecting of fossil faunas The revolutions of the globe The 

 changes of faunas by migration. 



THE universal admiration excited in the scientific 

 world by the series of memoirs which G. Cuvier 

 began to publish in 1798, and which were col- 

 lected in 1812 under the title of Recherches sur 

 les Ossements Fossiles, has not diminished in our 

 own days, notwithstanding that more than a 

 century has elapsed. Every naturalist wishing to 

 familiarize himself with the organization of the 

 higher animal world, living or fossil, must, even at 

 the present day, begin his studies by reading this 

 masterly work, in which are set forth, with luminous 

 clearness and precision, the fundamental notions of 

 the two sister sciences Comparative Anatomy and 

 the Palaeontology of the Vertebrates. 



The palseontological researches of Cuvier were at 

 first directed to the bones buried in the gypsum 

 quarries of the hill of Montmartre, and resulted in 

 the reconstitution of a world of extinct animals, 

 of which the Palceotherium, the Anoplotherium, the 

 Xiphodon, the Dichobunus, the Chceropotamus, and 

 the Adapis are the principal representatives. Here 

 we were no longer dealing with marine animals which 



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