xvili INTBODUCTION TO THE FIEST EDITION. 



worthy of Hunter and of himself. Yet he was very young, 

 and knew nothing of Hunter and but little of Daubenton. 

 Genius directed his steps, that genius which, when it appears, 

 and happily escapes the crushing influences " of established 

 socialisms," is sure to form a new era. Like most of the 

 great men of his day (products of the French revolution), he 

 had outstripped in his merest youth the age he lived in, and 

 rapidly shot beyond that which was to follow. 



Cuvier's early pursuits were the rectification, by means of 

 anatomy, of the classifications of Buffoii and Linne ; but he 

 quickly, as it were instinctively, passed beyond this com- 

 paratively narrow field into one which has no limits. Whilst 

 pursuing his inquiries on the structure of the invertebrate 

 kingdom, he soon saw that the animal forms he dissected 

 differed specifically and generically from those fossil forms 

 which lay around him. Palissy, the potter, had seen the 

 same ; Buffon had announced the fact : they were declared to 

 be dreamers. Cuvier offered to mankind the Ossemens 

 Fossiles in proof that they were so, and from that moment to 

 the present day few have had the hardihood to deny the 

 proof ; none but those who regard the Newtonian demonsta- 

 tion as an idle unprofitable dream. 



The importance thus given to zoological studies and pur- 

 suits by the application of the anatomical method in Zoology, 

 would have commenced and terminated with Cuvier but for 

 this one circumstance he had created geology, palseontology ; 

 that last and most wonderful science, which seems to have no 

 limits. He had shown that without a knowledge of 'the 

 extinct zoologies there can be no geology, properly speaking; 

 none at least likely to interest man. Now this extinct 

 Zoology cannot be well understood, if at all, without a know- 

 ledge of the living zoology, that being the term and mean of 

 comparison. Thus was Zoology forced at last into the schools, 

 universities, and collegiate institutions.* 



* Cuvier had shown anatomy to be the only safe basis for testing zoology, 

 and a comparison of it with the extinct the only guide to palaeontology ; it 



