: ' ZOOLOGY. 



were, thp globe itself. giving to the lovers of truth in science 

 a key wherewith to read those vestiges of successive animal 

 forms which we, for want of a more correct term, call 

 Vest iL, p es of Creation, and removed from the mental vision of 

 men that dark veil of ignorance which had certainly endured 

 for some thousand years. 



" As Cuvier pursued his anatomical investigations, for they 

 were strictly so, he classified and arranged the individual 

 animals examined by him into distinct species, according to 

 their anatomical differences; still, adhering to the anatomical 

 method, he only viewed the distinctions as generic when they 

 were wider, larger, and quite apparent. Not that he despised 

 external characters, or neglected them ; but as an anatomist 

 he felt himself bound to view them as secondary, and of 

 infinitely less importance than the anatomical. Moreover, 

 they were wholly inapplicable, or nearly so, to the fossil 

 world, at least to that class, the Vertebrata, in which man is 

 most interested. 



" If the theory I am about to propose be true, that the 

 young, namely, of every species, represents a generic an'mml. 

 embracing in its structure and natural history characters the 

 possible of all the species, past, present, and to come, belong- 

 ing to the natural family of which it forms a portion, then 

 the natural history of the fossil world might be guessed at, 

 might be restored, but not otherwise. The fossil horse was 

 only a horse generically ; but whether a horse properly so 

 called, an ass, a zebra, a quagga, or none of these, none can 

 now for certain say : the fossil tiger was no tiger, in all pro- 

 bability; nor the bear a bear, appertaining to, or to be cla-sed 

 with, any species now living. The exterior of the fossil 

 world is lost for ever ; all that is left of it being merely the 

 fabulous traditions of rude ages, peopling the world with 

 monsters, which the discoveries of Cuvier in some measure 

 corroborated. 



" When the anatomical method failed in Cuvier's hands, as 

 it often did, the illustrious discoverer was thrown upon the 

 field of hypothesis. The seeming fixity of species was the 

 first stumbling-block he encountered : this led to his theory 

 of successive creations, if that can be called a theory which 

 removes the inquiry at once from all further investigation. 

 By anatomy it was not easy, occasionally impossible, to dis- 

 tinguish species from each other, which, when viewed as 

 clothed with their external attributes, are obviously and 



