326 ON THE CLASSES OF THE 



truth justly due to their patient investigation and accuracy 

 of research, to say that without them the Zoologist would 

 probably have still been accustomed, like our predeces- 

 sors half a century ago, to confound the true object of 

 Natural History with Nomenclature. He would still have 

 had to wander amid the animated works of Creation with 

 nothing but Linnasan light, or, what is worse, its reflec- 

 tion, to guide his steps. 



For skill in anatomical dissection, for accuracy of ob-^ 

 servation, and reference of means to their respective ends, 

 perhaps no man living can be placed in competition with 

 M. Cuvier. His works present a never-failing fund for 

 meditation ; they compose a mine of information, from 

 which the ore is as rich as it is inexhaustible. But the 

 disposition or ability to make use of this ore, to give it the 

 pi'oper form and polish, is not, it seems, a necessary con- 

 comitant to skill in extracting it, or to the patience re- 

 quired before it could have been collected for use. At 

 least it is but too visible, and has been too often and 

 too justly remarked, that no person of such transcendent 

 talents and ingenuity ever made so little use of his obser- 

 vations towards a natural arrangement as M. Cuvier. 

 His splendid Geological theories, which, from the particu- 

 lar direction Natural Science has taken in this country, 

 have tended more to make him known here than all bis 

 other works taken together, and his Anatomical observa- 

 tions, which occupy so interesting a portion of the History 

 of Science during the last twenty years, are infinitely 

 beyond the feeble praise which it is in my power to 

 bestow on them. And indeed in characterizing his merits 

 as a naturalist, we have less concern with such labours 

 than with his Regne Animal; a work which has been is- 



