ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 153 



In the " Ossemens fossiles " Cuvier leaves his paper 

 just as it first appeared in the " Annales du Museum," 

 as "a curious monument of the force of zoological laws 

 and of the use which may be made of them." 



Zoological laws truly, but not physiological laws. If 

 one sees a live dog's head, it is extremely probable that 

 a dog's tail is not far off, though nobody can say why 

 that sort of head and that sort of tail go together ; what 

 physiological connection there is between the two. So, 

 in the case of the Montmartre fossil, Cuvier, finding a 

 thorough opossum's head, concluded that the pelvis also 

 would be like an opossum's. But, most assuredly, the 

 most advanced physiologist of the present day could 

 throw no light on the question why these are associated, 

 nor could pretend to affirm that the existence of the one 

 is necessarily connected with that of the other. In fact, 

 had it so happened that the pelvis of the fossil had been 

 originally exposed, while the head lay hidden, the pres- 

 ence of the " marsupial bones," however like they might 

 have been to an opossum's, would by no means have 

 warranted the prediction that the skull would turn out 

 to be that of the opossum. It might just as well have 

 been like that of some other Marsupial ; or even like 

 that of the totally different group of Monotremes, of 

 which the only living representatives are the Echidna 

 and the Ornithorhynchus. 



For all practical purposes, however, the empirical 

 laws of co-ordination of structures, which are embodied 

 in the generalisations of morphology, may be confidently 



