WORK IN PALMONTOLOGY 141 



built up his own vast reputation and thus added to 

 the glory of France. 



His first contribution to palaeontology * appeared 

 in 1798, in which he announced his intention of pub- 

 lishing an extended work on fossil bones of quadru- 

 peds, to restore the skeletons and to compare them 

 with those now living, and to determine their rela- 

 tions and differences ; but, says Blainville, in the list 

 of thirty or forty species which he enumerates in 

 his tableau, none was apparently discovered by 

 him, unless it was the species of " dog" of Montmar- 

 tre, which he afterward referred to his new genera 

 Palaeotherium and Anaplotherium. In 1801 (le 26 

 brumaire, an IX.) he published, by order of the Insti- 

 tut, the programme of a work on fossil quadrupeds, 

 with an increased number of species ; but, as Blain- 

 ville states, "It was not until 1804, and in tome iii. 

 of the Annales du Museum, namely, more than three 

 years after his programme, that he began his publi- 

 cations by fragments and without any order, while 

 these publications lasted more than eight years be- 

 fore they were collected into a general work " ; this 

 "corps d'ouvrage " being the Ossemens fossiles, which 

 was issued in 1812 in four quarto volumes, with an 

 atlas of plates. 



It is with much interest, then, that we turn to 

 Cuvier's great work, which brought him such imme- 

 diate and widespread fame, in order to see how he 

 treated his subject. His general views are contained 



* Sur les ossemens qui se trouvent dans le gyps de Monimartre 

 {Bulletin des sciences pour la Soci^U philomatique, tomes I, 2, 1798, 

 pp. 154-155)- 



