70 MEMOIRS OF 



ber of the species had not, by the size of their eyes, been 

 enabled to supply the deficiency of light ; but even in these 

 species, the eye scarcely changes its direction ; still less can 

 it change its dimensions, and accommodate itself to the dis- 

 tance of objects ; its iris neither dilates nor contracts, and 

 its pupil remains the same in every degree of light. No 

 tear bathes this eye, no eyelid soothes or protects it ; and, in 

 fishes, it is but a feeble representation of that beautiful, bril- 

 liant, and animated organ of the higher classes of animals. 

 Procuring food by swimming after a prey which also swims 

 with greater or lesser rapidity, having no means of seizing 

 this prey but by swallowing it, a delicate sense of taste 

 would have been useless to fishes had nature bestowed it on 

 them. But their tongue, almost immoveable, often bony, or 

 armed with dentated plates, and only receiving a few slen- 

 der nerves, shows us that this organ is as little sensible as it 

 is little necessary. Smell even cannot be as continually 

 exercised by fishes as by animals which breathe air in a di- 

 rect manner, and whose nostrils are unceasingly traversed 

 by odoriferous vapours. Lastly, we come to the touch, 

 which, from the surface of their bodies being encircled by 

 scales, by the inflexibility of the rays of their members, 

 and by the dryness of the membranes which envelope them, 

 has been obliged to seek refuge at the end of their lips ; and 

 even these, in some species, are reduced to a dry and in- 

 sensible hardness." 



In the whole of the chapter from which the above pas- 

 sage is selected, there is a poetical feeling, in which M. 

 Cuvier rarely indulged when treating of science, but with 

 which we find he could occasionally sport without injury to 

 his subject. In the next chapter he resumes his more pre- 

 cise manner ; and the contrast is the more striking, as this 

 chapter may be almost styled a collection of aphorisms. It 

 speaks of the exterior of fishes, and is succeeded by others 

 containing the oteology, myology, brain, and nerves, nutri- 

 tion, reproduction, and a general summing up and methodi- 

 cal distribution of this class into its great divisions, its natu- 

 ral families, &c. From the latter may be selected a pas- 

 sage well calculated to prevent those who study systems 

 from falling into a very common error. " Let it not be 

 imagined, because we place one genus or one family before 



