4838 Philosophy of Zoology. 



to the fossil remains of a former world ; never since man studied 

 science had a thought so fruitful in great results entered the human 

 mind. By it he dissected, as it were, the globe itself, giving to the 

 lovers of truth in science a key wherewith to read those vestiges of 

 successive animal forms which we, for want of a more correct term, 

 call Vestiges of Creation, and removed from the mental vision of men 

 that dark veil of ignorance which had certainly endured for some 

 thousand years. 



As Cuvier pursued his anatomical investigations, for they were 

 strictly so, he classified and arranged the individual animals examined 

 by him into distinct species, according to their anatomical differences ; 

 still, adhering to the anatomical method, he only viewed the distinc- 

 tions as generic when they were wider, larger and quite apparent. 

 Not that he despised external characters, or neglected them ; but as 

 an anatomist he felt himself bound to view them as secondary and of 

 infinitely less importance than the anatomical. Moreover, they were 

 wholly inapplicable, or nearly so, to the fossil world, at least to that 

 class, the Vertebrata, in which man is most interested. 



If the theory I am about to propose be true, that the young, 

 namely, of every species, represents a generic animal, embracing in 

 its structure and natural-history characters the possible of all the 

 species, past, present and to come, belonging to the natural family of 

 which it forms a portion, then the natural history of the fossil world 

 might be guessed— might be restored, but not otherwise. The fossil 

 horse was only a horse generically ; but whether a horse properly so 

 called, an ass, a zebra, a quagga, or none of these, none can now for 

 certain say : the fossil tiger was no tiger, in all probability ; nor the 

 bear a bear, appertaining to, or to be classed with, any species now 

 living. The exterior of the fossil world is lost for ever; all that is left 

 of it being merely the fabulous traditions of rude ages, peopling the 

 world with monsters, which the discoveries of Cuvier in some measure 

 corroborated. 



When the anatomical method failed in Cuvier' s hands, as it often 

 did, the illustrious discoverer was thrown upon the field of hypothesis. 

 The seeming fixity of species was the first stumbling-block he 

 encountered ; this led to his theory of successive creations, if that can 

 be called a theory which removes the inquiry at once from all further 

 investigation. By anatomy it was not easy, occasionally impossible, 

 to distinguish species from each other, which, when viewed as clothed 

 with their external attributes, are obviously arid notoriously distinct. 

 In this predicament stood the lion and tiger, panther and leopard, 



