CH. xxxix. COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 433 



three friends laboured well, Cuvier accomplished the 

 most of all. He had a most remarkable capacity for 

 work ; we find him at the same time restoring skeletons 

 and studying each bone with minute care, lecturing to 

 large bodies of students, writing the history of all the 

 sciences, and examining fossils from the rocks; besides 

 presiding over councils and superintending national educa- 

 tion. And whatever he touched was done thoroughly and 

 with a master-hand. 



His first great work was to collect all the different facts 

 of comparative anatomy established since the time of 

 Hunter, and, adding a great mass of his own observations, to 

 build them up into one complete science of anatomy. In. 

 his * Regne Animal,' published in 1817, he made a new 

 classification of the whole animal kingdom, dividing them 

 into four great branches. The vertebrata, or animals with 

 back-bones; the mollusca, or soft-bodied animals, such as 

 snails ; the articulata, or animals, such as crabs, spiders, bees, 

 and ants, whose bodies are composed of movable parts, 

 hardest outside, and jointed or articulated together ; and 

 the radiata, or animals whose parts are arranged round an 

 axis, such as star-fish and polyps. These four branches 

 he divided again into classes, orders, families, genera, and 

 species, making a much more complete classification than 

 Linnaeus had done, because it was founded more upon the 

 internal structure of animals. 



In this work he pointed out that the parts of an animal 

 are made to fit to each other in such a wonderful manner, 

 that if only a few bones are placed in the hands of an ana- 

 tomist he ought to be able to tell you exactly what all the 

 other bones must be. You will remember that Hunter 

 had hinted at this when he showed how the teeth of each 

 species of animal are fitted to the kind of stomach into 



