146 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



Cuvier himself applied his methods to many forms from 

 the early tertiary or older formations he would have 

 failed. If, for instance, he had had before him the 

 disconnected fragments of an eocene tillodont he 

 would undoubtedly have referred a molar tooth to 

 one of his pachyderms, an incisor tooth, to a rodent, 

 and a claw bone to a carnivore.. -The. tooth' of a' 

 Hesperornis would have given him no possible hint of 

 the rest of the skeleton, nor its swimming feet the 

 slightest clue to the ostrich-like sternum or skull. 

 And yet the earnest belief in his own methods led 

 Cuvier to some of his most important discoveries." 



Let us now examine from Cuvier's own words in 

 his Discours, not relying on the statements of his 

 expositors or followers, just what he taught notwith- 

 standing the clear utterances of his older colleague, 

 Lamarck, whose views he set aside and either ignored 

 or ridiculed.* 



He at the outset affirms that nature has, like man- 

 kind, also had her intestine wars, and that "the 

 surface of the globe has been much convulsed by 

 successive revolutions and various catastrophes." 



As first proof of the revolutions on the surface of 

 the earth he instances fossil shells, which in the 

 lowest and most level parts of the earth are " almost 

 everywhere in such a perfect state of preservation 

 that even the smallest of them retain their most 



* The following statement of Cuvier's views is taken from Jame- 

 son's translation of the first Essay on the Theory of the Earth, " which 

 formed the introduction to his Recherches sur les Osseniens fossiles" 

 the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the pub- 

 lication of the Hydrogeologie. The original I have not seen, but I 

 have compared Jameson's translation with the sixth edition of the 

 Discours (1820). 



