144 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



and that by assiduous researches for nearly thirty 

 years* he has collected skeletons of all the genera 

 and sub-genera of quadrupeds, with those of many 

 species in certain genera, and several individuals of 

 certain species. With such means it was easy for him 

 to multiply his comparisons, and to verify in all their 

 details the applications of his laws. 



Such is the famous law of correlation of parts, of 

 Cuvier. It could be easily understood by the layman, 

 and its enunciation added vastly to the popular repu- 

 tation and prestige of the young science of comparative 

 anatomy .f In his time, and applied to the forms 



* In the first edition of the Thiorie he says fifteen years, writing in 

 1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to thirty. 



f De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier's law and of his 

 assumptions ; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says : 



" Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. 

 G. Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in 

 a kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then 

 almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections 

 which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a 

 comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without 

 having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism 

 which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, 

 because he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science 

 of organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did. 

 Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his 

 assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a 

 skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously corre- 

 lated in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong 

 imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in 

 an animal well known and studied even to satiety ; but for an unknown 

 animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the 

 .inatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anato- 

 mists like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d'Azyr, Blumenbach, Soem- 

 mering, and Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier 

 would have been himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at 

 his word, and besides it is this assertion which will remain formulated 

 in the mouths of the ignorant, and which has already made many 

 persons believe that it is possible to answer the most difficult and 

 often insoluble problems in palseontology, without having made any 

 preliminary study, with the aid of dividers, and, on the other hand, 



