PROGRESS OF ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY. 497 



same plan ; that there was a similarity of composi- 

 tion between the bird and the echinus, the whale 

 and the snail ; in spite of the skill with which some 

 persons sought gradually to efface their discre- 

 pancies." 



Whether it may be possible to establish, among 

 the four great divisions of the " Animal Kingdom," 

 some analogies of a higher order than those which 

 prevail within each division, I do not pretend to 

 conjecture. If this can be done, it is clear that it 

 must be by comparing the types of these divisions 

 under their most general forms : and thus Cuvier's 

 arrangement, so far as it is itself rightly founded on 

 the unity of composition of each branch, is the 

 surest step to the discovery of a unity pervading 

 and uniting these branches. But though those who 

 generalize surely, and those who generalize rapidly, 

 may travel in the same direction, they soon sepa- 

 rate so widely, that they appear to move from each 

 other. The partisans of a universal " unity of com- 

 position" of animals, accused Cuvier of being too 

 inert in following the progress of physiological and 

 zoological science. Borrowing their illustration 

 from the political parties of the times, they asserted 

 that he belonged to the science of the resistance, 

 not to the science of the movement. Such a charge 

 was highly honourable to him ; for no one acquainted 

 with the history of zoology can doubt that he had a 

 great share in the impulse by which the "move- 

 ment" was occasioned ; or that he himself made a 

 VOL. m. K K 



