558 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



later period, " as I became acquainted with Messer- 

 schmidt's drawing, and joined to the differences 

 which it presented, those which I had myself ob- 

 served in the inferior jaw and the molar teeth, I no 

 longer doubted that the fossil elephants were of a 

 species different from the Indian elephant. This 

 idea, which I announced to the Institute in the 

 month of January, 1796, opened to me views en- 

 tirely new respecting the theory of the earth ; 

 and determined me to devote myself to the 

 long researches and to the assiduous labours 

 which have now occupied me for twenty-five 

 years 27 ." 



We have here, then, the starting-point of those 

 researches concerning extinct animals, which, ever 

 since that time, have attracted so large a share of 

 notice from geologists and from the world. Cuvier 

 could hardly have anticipated the vast storehouse 

 of materials which lay under his feet, ready to sup- 

 ply him occupation of the most intense interest in 

 the career on which he had thus entered. The 

 examination of the strata on which Paris stands, 

 and of which its buildings consist, supplied him 

 with animals, not only different from existing ones, 

 but some of them of great size and curious pecu- 

 liarities. A careful examination of the remains 

 which these strata contain was undertaken soon 

 after the period we have referred to. In 1802, 

 Defrance had collected several hundreds of unde- 

 87 Ossemens Fossiles, second edit. i. 178. 



