xii PBEFACE TO THE FIBST EDITION. 



It was not enough that we should be correct, that we should faithfully 

 describe the organs of the animal economy. It was desirable that the truth 

 might be presented from a high philosophical point of view — one that 

 should rise above details. It is necessary in a book, and especially in one 

 on anatomy, that there should be a salient idea which might indicate 

 its purpose and originality, and distinguish it as something more than a 

 mere arid catalogue, by unifying the thousand different objects of which 

 it treats. In support of this, we would ask permission to explain, in a few 

 words, the idea that presided in the construction of our work. 



Among the beings or objects composing the natural world, animals are 

 distinguished by diversity in size and external conformation. Is this 

 diversity repeated in their internal structure ? When order and simplicity 

 prevail everywhere else in nature, should we expect to find disorder and 

 complication there, or look for as many different organisations as there are 

 particular species ? To state these questions, and to resolve them in the 

 affirmative, would be to insult the wisdom of the Creator. The early 

 naturalists, guided by instinct rather than knowledge, admired a certain 

 uniformity in the composition of animals. 



It was a good inspiration, which threatened to become effaced at the 

 period when anatomical science, diffused and cultivated everywhere with the 

 most laudable eagerness, daily discovered the secrets of the organisation of 

 new species. Without a guide in the search for analogies, struck with the 

 apparent differences their scalpel exposed every moment, the anatomists of 

 that epoch neglected to compare the diverse animals. In presence of a new 

 form of organs, they believed in. the existence of a new instrument, and 

 created a new name to designate it. Then was human anatomy, and that of 

 the Horse, Ox, etc., established ; monographs became multiplied ; as the 

 different opinions increased, so there was the greater need for a bond to 

 imite these incongruous materials ; confusion commenced, and chaos was 

 about to appear ; and the principle of analogies was on the point of being 

 buried beneath the ruins of science. 



Happily, two men appeared, men of genius, who were the glory of 

 France — G. Cuvier and Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire ; two names which 

 will be for ever illustrious, and which we love to unite as the expression 

 of one and the same symbol. 



The first, after immense researches, ventured to compare the innu- 

 merable species in the animal kingdom with each other; he seized their 

 general characters— the analogies which allied them to one another ; he 

 weighed these analogies, contrasted them with the dissimilarities, and 

 established among them different kinds and different degrees ; and in this 

 way was he able to form natural groups, themselves subdivided into several 

 categories in which individuals were gathered together according to their 

 analogies and affinities. Then the chaos was swept away, light appeared, 

 and the field of science was no longer obscured ; comparative anatomy was 

 created in all its branches, and the structure of the animal kingdom was 



