94 THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS OF THE WING. 
tunate discoveries, their sufferings, and their sublime courage. More 
than one young man shall be moved by the sight of these heroes, and 
depart to dream enthusiastically of following in their footsteps. 
Herein lies the twofold grandeur of the place. Its treasures were 
sent by heroic men, and they were collected, classified, and harmonized 
by illustrious physicists, to whom all things flowed as to a legitimate 
centre, and whom their position, no less than their intellect, induced 
to accomplish here the centralization of nature. 
In the last century, the great movement of the sciences revolved 
around a man of genius, influential by his rank, his social relations, 
his fortune—M. the Count de Buffon. All the donations of men of 
science, travellers, and kings, came to him, and by him were classified 
in this museum. In our own days a grander spectacle has fixed upon 
this spot the eager eyes of all the nations of the world, when two 
mighty men (or rather two systems), Cuvier and Geoffroy, made 
this their battle-field. All the world enrolled itself on the one side 
or the other; all took part in the strife, and despatched to the 
Museum, either in support of or opposition to the experiments, 
books, animals, or facts previously unknown. Hence these collections, 
which one might suppose to be dead, are really living; they still 
throb with the recollections of the fray, are still animated by the lofty 
minds which invoked all these beings to be the witnesses of their pro- 
lific struggle. 
It is no fortuitous gathering yonder. It consists of closely 
connected series, formed and systematically arranged by profound 
thinkers. Those species which form the most curious transitions 
between the genera are richly represented. There you may see, far 
more fully than elsewhere, what Linné and Lamarck have said, that 
just as our museums gradually grew richer, became more complete, 
exhibited fewer lacune, we should be constrained to acknowledge 
that nature does nothing abruptly, in all things proceeds by gentle 
and insensible transitions. Wherever we seem to see in her works a 
bound, a chasm, a sudden and inharmonious interval, let us ascribe 
the fault to ourselves ; that blank is our own ignorance. 
