156 NATURAL HISTORY. 



by the fantastic theories which had been put forward upon 

 this subject by some of his own countrymen. 



Thus, Benedict de Maillet, who wrote theoretically, and 

 without any special knowledge of zoological science, had 

 published a curious work entitled 'Telliamed,* or a 

 Discourse between an Indian Philosopher and a French 

 Missionary on the Diminution of the Sea,' of which an 

 English translation was published in 1749. The funda- 

 mental proposition of this work was that the sea had at one 

 time covered the whole of the dry land, and that therefore 

 all the primitive forms of animal life must have been 

 marine and aquatic in their habits. Hence, he supposed 

 that the inhabitants of this hypothetical universal ocean 



%r- 



had become changed into new forms, when the sea had 

 retired, and the land had come into existence. In this 

 way, all our present diversified forms of animal life had 

 been produced, some of those animals which lived near 

 the surface of the sea (such as Flying-fishes) becoming 

 developed into birds ; while some of those which lived at 

 the bottom of the sea became converted into the terrestrial 

 quadrupeds. 



Again, Robinet, another theorist, had likewise published, 

 in 1768, a work entitled 'Considerations philosophiques 

 sur la Gradation naturelle des Formes de Petre,' in which 

 he endeavoured to establish the proposition that the lower 

 animals were merely the unsuccessful attempts which 

 Nature had made in the production of Man. 



In his views as to the fixity of species, Cuvier, on the 

 other hand, was strictly orthodox. He recognised the 

 existence of numerous varieties, especially among the 



* Telliamed is an anagram of the author's own name. 



