BARON CUVIER. 97 



and caused the disappearance of countries for- 

 merly inhabited by man, and animals which are 

 now known ; and, on the other hand, has ex- 

 posed the bottom of the water, and has formed 

 from that, the countries now inhabited .... but 

 these countries which are now dry had already 

 been inhabited, if not by man, at least by terres- 

 trial animals ; consequently one preceding revo- 

 lution at least must have covered them with 

 water, and, if we may judge by the different 

 orders of animals of which we find the remains, 

 they had perhaps been submitted to two or three 

 irruptions of the sea; and these irruptions, these 

 repeated retreats, have not all been slow or gra- 

 dual. The greater number of the catastrophes 

 which brought them about have been sudden, a 

 fact easily proved by the last of all, the traces of 

 which are most manifest, and which has still 

 left in the North the bodies of large quadrupeds, 

 seized by the ice, and by it preserved, even to 

 our own times, with their skin, their fur, and 

 their flesh. Had tliey not been frozen as soon 

 as killed, putrefaction would have decomposed 

 them ; and this eternal frost has only prevailed 

 over the places inhabited by them, in conse- 

 quence of the same catastrophe which has de- 



H 



