144 NATURAL HISTORY. 



work was in reality a second edition, in an enlarged form, 

 of the 'preliminary discourse' to the first edition of the 

 ' Ossemens fossiles.' It was translated into English, and in 

 this form went through several editions. The ' Recherches 

 sur les Ossemens fossiles ' is one of the standard works of 

 zoologists and palaeontologists, and is likely long to remain 

 so. The edition most commonly used is the fourth, in 

 eight volumes octavo and two quarto volumes of plates, 

 published subsequently to Cuvier's death, and having an 

 introduction by Cuvier's brother Frederick, himself a 

 famous naturalist. The plates were not only in many 

 cases drawn by Cuvier himself, who was an admirable 

 draughtsman, but many of them were also engraved with 

 his own hand. 



Famous as are the works just alluded to, nothing that 

 Cuvier published attained a higher reputation, or has been 

 more widely used, than his great systematic treatise on 

 the animal kingdom ( * Regne Animal distribue d'apres son 

 Organisation ' ). The first edition of this, in four octavo 

 volumes, appeared in 1817, but in subsequent editions it 

 was much enlarged. ' In this classical work, Cuvier 

 embodied the results of the whole of his previous 

 researches on the structure of living and fossil animals, as 

 giving confirmation and fixity to that system of classifica- 

 tion of which he was the originator, and the main features 

 of which still subsist. The whole of this work was his 

 own, with the exception of the Insects, in which he was 

 assisted by his friend Latreille.' 



In taking a general view of the advances which Cuvier 

 effected in zoological science, the main results which he 

 accomplished fall naturally under three heads. In the 



