VI PREFACE. 



spending functions, learned in all that had been done by his 

 predecessors, in free communication with all the more illus- 

 trious of his contemporary labourers in the same field, to what 

 nation soever they happened to belong, combining with a 

 most extended and correct knowledge of all the leading genera 

 now inhabiting the earth, a more extensive acquaintance with 

 those which have perished in the lapse of time and by the 

 course of change, than any other man ever possessed, and above 

 all, being without any preconceived theory, and therefore 

 zealous only for the truth, this great naturalist seemed to be, 

 above all others, the man fitted for affording such a general 

 view of the living world as should be at once clear, striking, 

 and faithful to its subject, and inviting, instructive, and useful 

 to mankind generally. 



By grounding his arrangement upon the organisation, he was 

 enabled to communicate as much real information in a few 

 instances of general description, as could have been furnished by 

 a volume of details ; and thus, while he was enabled to condense 

 the whole into a moderate compass, all the parts became more 

 clear, and the grand relations of the whole, in which the mighty 

 design the wisdom and power of God in the works of creation 

 became most strikingly manifest. 



The mind of a truly great man like Cuvier, when condensing 

 and concentrating the rays of knowledge, has an effect very 

 much resembling that of a convex lens in concentrating the rays 

 of light. If the substance of the lens be fine and transparent, 

 and the form and fashioning true, the lens becomes eyes to the 

 dim-sighted, magnifies the small, brings the distant near, and 



