UN1VERSI1 



OF 



CH. xxxix. VON BAER. 437 



before the world a startling history of the long succession of 

 different animals which must have lived in past ages upon 

 the earth. 



And here we must close this very imperfect sketch of the 

 work done by the three French naturalists. You ought 

 chiefly to remember about them that Lamarck suggested 

 that animals have been developed out of a few simple 

 forms ; that St-Hilaire proved that animals of one class are 

 formed on the same general plan, similar parts being altered 

 to serve different purposes in different animals ; and thfet 

 Cuvier showed that each part of an animal agrees with the 

 rest so perfectly that from a few bones it is possible to tell 

 exactly what animals had lived and died in past ages. 



Geoffroy St.-Hilaire outlived both his friends, and died, 

 blind and paralysed, in 1840. Lamarck had died in 1829, 

 in his eighty-fifth year, having been blind for many years. 

 Cuvier died on May 13, 1832. On the Tuesday previous 

 he had begun his third course of lectures on Natural Science 

 at the College de France, and had promised to give in that 

 course his idea of creation, and how the Divine Intelligence 

 is to be traced through all the operations of nature ; but the 

 promise remained unfulfilled ; that same evening paralysis 

 set in, and on the next Sunday he died in his arm-chair as 

 if he had fallen asleep. He had begged to be buried 

 privately, but that was impossible ; on hearing of his death 

 men of science flocked from all parts to do him the last 

 honour, and his pupils bore him to the grave. 



Von Baer, the Pounder of the Study of Embryology, 

 18'28. We must not leave this question of the structure of 

 animals without noticing in passing a new and important 

 study which began about this time. This was the study of 

 embryology, or of animals in the earliest stages of their life, 

 as in the case of the chicken before it leaves the egg. You 



