142 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



in the preliminary remarks in his well-known " Essay 

 on the Theory of the Earth " (i 8 12), which was fol- 

 lowed in 1 82 1 by his Discours sur les Revolutions de la 

 Surface du Globe. 



It was written in a more attractive and vigorous 

 style than the writings of Lamarck, more elegant, 

 concise, and with less repetition, but it is destitute of 

 the philosophic grasp, and is not the work of a pro- 

 found thinker, but rather of a man of talent who 

 was an industrious collector and accurate describer of 

 fossil bones, of a high order to be sure, but analyti- 

 cal rather than synthetical, of one knowing well the 

 value of carefully ascertained and demonstrated facts, 

 but too cautious, if he was by nature able to do so, 

 to speculate on what may have seemed to him too 

 few facts. It is also the work of one who fell in with 

 the current views of the time as to the general bear- 

 ing of his discoveries on philosophy and theology, 

 believing as he did in the universality of the Noa- 

 chian deluge. 



Like Lamarck, Cuvier independently made use of 

 the comparative method, the foundation method in 

 palaeontology ; and Cuvier's well-known " law of corre- 

 lation of structures," so well exemplified in the verte- 

 brates, was a fresh, new contribution to philosophical 

 biology. 



In his Discours, speaking of the difificulty of 

 determining the bones of fossil quadrupeds, as com- 

 pared with fossil shells or the remains of fishes, he 

 remarks : * 



* The following account is translated from the fourth edition of the 

 Ossemens fossiles, vol. i., 1834, also the sixth edition of the Discours, 



