BARON CUVIER. 31 



highest branches of the science, and it was reserved for a 

 mighty genius of our own time to open the path to us, and 

 to smooth the difficulties of that path, by precisely deter- 

 mining the hmits of the great divisions, by exactly defin- 

 ing the lesser groups, by placing them all according to the 

 invariable characters of their internal structure, and by 

 ridding them of the accumulations of synonymes and ab- 

 surdities which ignorance, want of method, or fertility of 

 imagination had heaped upon them. 



Gifted with natural powers beyond the common lot of 

 mortality, guided in earliest youth by a sensible and rightly- 

 judging parent, and prepared by an excellent German 

 education, M. Cuvier was still further aided by a circum- 

 stance which, at first sight, seemed to be an obstacle to his 

 progress. Almost excluded from the society of first-rate 

 naturalists, and deprived, by the distracted state of France, 

 of access to first-rate books, he was driven to nature her- 

 self ; and as she, in her most minute operations, carries 

 into execution that beautiful order and perfection which 

 distinguishes her larger productions, so, to talents like 

 those of M. Cuvier, did the study of the most insignificant 

 animals open a vast field for future lesearch and investiga- 

 tion. His mind was peculiarly calculated to embrace the 

 great whole which a mass of details ofifers ; at the same 

 time he knew, that by an intimate and accmate know- 

 ledge of these details alone could he realize the compre- 

 hensive views, which, even in his first studies, filled his 

 great mind. He was of opinion, that every branch of 

 science was to be rendered important if studied properly ; 

 no one, therefore, set a higher value on minutia?, at the 

 same time he was never once seen to lose himself in the 

 intricacies and minor considerations attached to these nn- 

 nutiee. Every research, no matter how humble, how in- 

 significant it might appear to the eyes of others, was by 

 him converted to the furtherance of his great objects, the 

 discovery and just appreciation of the truth. 



The anatomical labours of M. Cuvier tended to deter- 

 mine the physical functions of every animal, of each part 

 of each animal, and to assign to the animal itself its place 

 in the series of beings ; to prove, that as each of the parts 

 of an organized being has a function to perform, so does 



