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SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



183 



solid foundation of comparative anatomical know- 

 ledge which was afterwards to be of so much use 

 to him in his studies among the fossil vertebrates. 

 For are not these studies essentially the comparative 

 anatomy of animals, which differ from those with 

 which the anatomist (or osteologist) ordinarily 

 deals, in that, as Huxley has put it, they have been 

 dead longer ? 



Excavations in the famous Montmatre beds of 

 the Paris basin, so long quarried for the sake of 

 the gypsum used in the manufacture of plaster-of- 

 Paris, had furnished a large number of mammalian 

 bones, while others were obtained from the well- 

 known limestone, the calcaire grassier, which in its 

 highest part supplies much of the excellent building- 

 stone of Paris. After working assiduously at these 

 remains for some time Cuvier published his first 

 great work, " Recherches sur les Ossements 

 Fossiles," the first edition of which appeared in 

 1812. This work, completed in 1822, is the record 

 of the first adequate investigation of the fossil 

 remains of any large group of vertebrates ; work to 

 be so ably followed up in this country by Richard 

 Owen (a pupil of Cuvier's, and second only in this 

 field), by Agassiz in Switzerland, and by Hermann 

 von Meyer in Germany. 



We all know something of the methods adopted 

 by Cuvier, how his knowledge of comparative 

 anatomy and osteology enabled him to build 

 up his forms from a few scattered bones, 

 taking as his guide the great principle of " correla- 

 tion of growth." This he was able to do simply 

 because he knew that, at least so far as living 

 organisms are concerned, a certain type of bone or 

 tooth is always found in association with other 

 correlated structures. Was not this, however, 

 exactly the method adopted by Nicholas Steno, the 

 Florentine professor, whose work we have already 

 noticed ? How was it that he was able to say 

 that the famous glossopetras were sharks' teeth ? 

 Does he not reason that since glossopetrae are 

 similar to modern sharks' teeth they Inust have 

 belonged to shark-like animals, with their other 

 correlated peculiarities of structure ? Does he not, 

 in reality, build up the fish from its tooth ? Most 

 assuredly he adopts the method with which Cuvier 

 is generally credited as the founder. The late 

 I'rofessor Huxley says in his admirable essay on 

 " The Progress of Palaeontology," " If you will 

 turn to the ' Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles ' 

 and watch Cuvier, not speculating, but working, 

 you will find that his method is neither more nor 

 less than that of Steno. If he was able to make 

 his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon 

 the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis of 

 the same animal which lay hidden in it, it 

 was not because either he or anyone else knew, 

 or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule, 

 constantly accompanied by the presence of marsu- 



pial bones, but simply because experience has shown 

 that these two structures are co-ordinated." (^) 

 However this may be, Cuvier's work was of the very 

 greatest importance ; not only did he bring to light 

 a great number of new and extinct mammals, but 

 some of the Montmatre fossils are of extreme 

 interest as affording some of the best examples of 

 what are now called "synthetic types." As an 

 example we may take the two genera of extinct 

 hoofed a.rnma.\s ncimed. Anaplotheyium and Palaothe- 

 rium, the former of which unites in one organism 

 characters some of which are now found only in 

 the pigs, while others are peculiar to the rumi- 

 nants ; while Palaotherium unites the characters now 

 found in such apparently diverse animals as the 

 tapir, the horse and the rhinoceros. The later 

 progress of palaeontology has resulted in the recog- 

 nition of a large number of such " synthetic types." 



Cuvier soon found followers, both in this country 

 and abroad, and in the front rank must be placed 

 Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz and Richard Owen. 

 Agassiz was born at Motier, in Switzerland, in 

 1807, and after passing through the universities 

 of Heidelberg and Munich, and taking several 

 degrees, attended Cuvier's lectures in Paris in 

 1 83 1, and rapidly imbibed not only the enthusiasm, 

 but also the teleological and anti-evolutionary 

 opinions of his master. Indeed, the keynote of 

 the entire period we are now considering, the 

 atmosphere of thought which distinguishes it from 

 the present one, is the belief that there were 

 breaks in the history of creation, breaks brought 

 about by catastrophes, during which the whole of 

 the animals and plants perished, to be replaced 

 later by an entirely new creation. Agassiz stands 

 out as the greatest ichthyologist of the century, 

 and his chief work, " Recherches sur les Poissons 

 Fossiles," is a monument of patient labour, con- 

 sisting as it does of five volumes, with 311 plates, 

 describing 20,000 specimens of fossil fish belonging 

 to 1,700 species contained in all the chief museums 

 in Europe. 



The late Sir Richard Owen, a man second only 

 to Cuvier in the field of comparative anatomy, was 

 born in Lancaster ninety-one years ago, and 

 became a student at Edinburgh, and after receiving 

 a medical education in London, was, in 1836, 

 appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at 

 the College of Surgeons. In 1856 he became chief 

 of the Natural History Department of the British 

 Museum, where the pala;ontological galleries form 

 a lasting monument to his memory. Owen became 

 Cuvier's direct successor, and as Mr. Smith Wood- 

 ward reminds us, " extending and elaborating 

 comparative anatomy as understood by Cuvier, 

 Owen concentrated his efforts on utilising the results 

 for the interpretation of the fossil remains — even 

 isolated bones and teeth — of extinct animals. He 

 (3) " Collected Essays," vol. iv., p. 33. 



