FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



101 



each bone should be placed with those to which it naturally 

 corresponded, before any satisfactory result could be obtained 

 — a task the stupendous difficulty of which the reader can easily 

 appreciate. It was necessary, (to use the eloquent language 

 of the Baron himself) that a sort of resurrection in mipia- 

 ture should take place ; and he had not at his disposal the all- 

 powerful trumpet, at whose sound the scattered fragments 

 should re-unite, and each resume its proper place. But stu- 

 pendous as was this task, it was yet accomplished. On the 

 immutable laws prescribed by nature to living beings, he re- 

 constructed those ancient animals, and the voice of comparative 

 anatomy was the trumpet of this scientific resurrection. He 

 has no language, he says, to depict the pleasure he experienced, 

 as he observed, on the discovery of each peculiar character, the 

 consequences which he had predicted from it develope themselves 

 in gradual succession. Thus, for example, the feet corresponded 

 with the peculiarities announced by the teeth, and the teeth 

 with those indicated by the feet. The bones of the legs, thighs, 

 &c., all proved conformable to the judgment he had formed 

 beforehand, from the consideration of other parts. Each 

 species, in fact, seemed, as it were, to be reproduced from a 

 single one of its component elements. 



The Baron enters into a very minute and detailed account 

 of the steps which he was obhged to pursue, in the restoration of 

 these monuments of a former age. This, indubitably, is the 

 only plan for enabling the reader thoroughly to appreciate the 

 difficulty, extent, and value of his labours. By this means, too, 

 we are put in possession of the strongest demonstrations of the 

 truth and justice of those principles which conducted him to 

 his conclusions. This part of his work contains a multiplica- 

 tion of examples of the precision with which nature in all cases 

 observes the laws of co-existence, and is of inestimable value 

 to the natural historian. Such are the researches which have 

 raised zoology to the rank of a rational science — which have 

 banished from it those absurd and arbitrary combinations. 



