270 THE OVARIAN EGG. 
by a set of beings totally different from those 
that inhabit it now ; still farther was it from their 
thought to imagine that creation after creation 
had followed each other in successive ages, every 
one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. 
It was Cuvier who, aroused to new labors by the 
hint he received from the bones unearthed at 
Montmartre, to which all his vast knowledge of 
living animals gave him no clew, established by 
means of most laborious investigations the as- 
tounding conclusion, that, prior to the existence 
of the animals and plants now living, this globe 
had been the theatre of another set of beings, 
every trace of which had vanished from the face 
of the earth. To his alert and active intellect, 
and powerful imagination, a word spoken out of 
the past was pregnant with meaning; and when 
he had once convinced himself that he had found 
a single animal that had no counterpart among 
living beings, it gave him the key to many mys- 
teries. The existence of a past creation once 
suggested, confirmation was found in a thousand 
facts overlooked before. The solid crust of the 
earth gave up its dead, and from the snows of 
Siberia, from the soil of Italy, from caves of Cen- 
tral Europe, from mines, from the rent sides of 
mountains and from their highest peaks, from 
the coral beds of ancient oceans, the varied ani- 
mals that had possessed the earth, ages before 
man was created, spoke to us of the past. 
