MEMOIR OF CUVfllt.' 



PLATE I. CTJVIER. 



IN every department of Science we have occasionally 

 seen "bright minds" appearing, which seemed as it were 

 to have condensed the information and discoveries of their 

 predecessors, and, by one great bound, to have left them 

 immeasurably distant, removing a gloomy covering from 

 some portion which at once acted as a key to the rest ; 

 while the labors of the next half century would make lit- 

 tle farther advance, and the facts which had been accumu- 

 lating would remain to be again simultaneously employed 

 in penetrating yet deeper into the mechanism and de- 

 sign 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 necessaries, comforts or luxuries. 

 Those sciences which had already been found of impor- 

 tance in the economy of man, or which could be brought 

 to assist in the prosperity of their advocates, advanced 

 much more rapidly, and we have examples of splendid 

 discoveries in Medicine, Chemistry, and Astronomy. But 

 in Natural History, though many illustrious names could 

 be mentioned from the time of Aristotle to those of Linnaeus 

 and Buffon, forty years have scarcely elapsed, since the 

 living works of creation were studied with a view to the re- 

 lation between their internal and external organs, and the 

 facts which had been so long in collecting were reduced 

 to any arrangement. Linnaeus and Buffon, whose works, 

 we have endeavored to review rapidly in our former vol- 

 ume, were contemporary, and each in his own way as- 



