BARON CUVIER. 43 



he presents his readers with nothing that can draw the mind 

 from the contemplation of reality. From this work we 

 may deduce certain general rules, certain axioms, which 

 may apply to every part of animal life, in every corner of 

 the world. Let us take the single instance of a person 

 shipwrecked in an unknown sea, and cast up by the waves 

 on a shore wholly strange to him. Towards the means of 

 life are directed the efforts of returning consciousness : ve- 

 getables will first offer themselves to his notice, as most 

 easily procured ; but an anatomist will know, that his 

 teeth and organs of digestion were giv^en to hini that he 

 might repair the exhaustion of his frame by animal sub- 

 stances, and that without these he will not be so healthy 

 and strong as nature intended he should be. A single bone, 

 accidentally lying in his path, will tell him, if this compa- 

 ratively desert country contains animals against which he 

 must provide means of defence ; but what will l)e his joy, 

 if this single bone informs him, that ruminating animals 

 exist there. Milk, flesb, beasts of burden, skins for bedding 

 and clothing, at once present themselves to his view. 

 Furnished v/ith such sources of comfort, he is prepared to 

 avoid the destructive, to ensnare the swift, and to make use 

 of the docile ; and weaker in bodily force, perhaps, than 

 the animals by which he is surrounded in his desolate ha- 

 bitation, yet, by the superiority of his intelligence, he be- 

 comes their sovereign. 



To say precisely what this great treatise displays, in an 

 extent of five thick octavo volumes, each containing from 

 five to six hundred pages ; to give an exact list of every 

 thing it embraces, would be to offer a dry catalogue of 

 names, which would not be generally understood ; but in 

 order to show the maimer in which it is conducted through- 

 out, and how thoroughly it carries the student into ever}' 

 portion of an organized body, I submit the way in which 

 the head is treated. The difierent bones which form the 

 box called the skull, with their shapes, are first detailed ; 

 then follow the articulation of the head upon the spine, and 

 its consequent movements, the muscles which aid these 

 movements, and give force and motion to the jaws ; 

 the unequal surfaces of the interior of the skull ; the 

 holes of the skull ; the bones of the face ; the brain and its 



