396 ZOOLOGY. 



sophical principles. True, it is a science of observation, and not 

 of calculation ; it has to deal with living bodies, arid with the 

 mysterious and hitherto undiscovered principle of life, whose 

 laws are not to be explained by numbers, however multiplied, 

 nor by a geometry, however refined. Fluxions avail not here, 

 nor the integral calculus. Nevertheless, some great minds have 

 shown that Zoology has its laws, which, despite difficulties almost 

 innumerable, may be so inquired into as to evolve some truths 

 of more import to man than at first appears. 



"The observation of nature is no doubt the first duty of every 

 candid observer ; next conies the duty of the inquirer into her 

 laws, for the mere observance of a fact is of no value whatever, 

 unless that fact be placed in its relations with all others. Men 

 had observed, and no doubt observed carefully, long before the 

 age of Aristotle, but he alone was equal to the production of the 

 Historia Animalium. He was followed, at a long interval, by 

 Buffon and Linne' ; last came the immortal Cuvier. The dis- 

 covery of the true signification of the fossil remains of the organic 

 world by this illustrious and justly celebrated man was unques- 

 tionably the most remarkable step ever made for the advance- 

 ment of the human mind. The element of research he employed 

 was the descriptive anatomy of the adult or fully-developed indi- 

 vidual of all, or at least of most, of the species of animals now 

 occupying the globe. The minute descriptive anatomy of the 

 species, with a view to the rigorous determination of its true 

 nature and position in a natural-history arrangement, seemed to 

 be the ultimatum of all his inquiries ; and if he spoke of genera 

 or natural families, it was more as a naturalist, or as one by 

 whom generic distinctions were viewed rather as expressions of 

 philosophic arrangement than as realities based in Nature. It 

 was whilst pursuing this inquiry into the existing and living 

 fauna of the present world, that the thought struck him of 

 applying the element of research he then wielded with such 

 dexterity to the fossil remains of a former world : never since 

 man studied science had a thought so fruitful in great results 

 entered the human mind. By it he dissected, as it were, the 

 globe itself, giving to the lovers of truth in science a key where- 

 with to read those vestiges of successive animal forms which we, 

 for want of a more correct term, call Vestiges of Creation, and 

 removed from the mental vision of men that dark veil of igno- 

 rance 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 anato- 

 mical 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 



