5476 Zoology : its present Phasis 



fori, now about to resume their just position in Science, proved, in 

 France, so long as they were permitted to be read, an insurmountable 

 obstacle to a return to that state of degradation to which the parti- 

 pretre had succeeded in reducing it in England. As that party 

 existed on both sides the Straits 'of Dover, the question may be fairly 

 asked, Why was not the success equal on both sides ? The answer 

 is easily made, and most satisfactorily. On the English side we had 

 no Revolution setting free the human mind from the bondage of ages, 

 and producing such intellects as those of Arago and Cuvier, Laplace 

 and Fourier, GeofFroy and Savigny, Malus and Gay Lussac. With 

 us, on the favoured side of the Channel, Sot George succeeded Idiot 

 George ; the English mandarins, with whom, of course, was the Eng- 

 lish parti-prelre, successfully resisted the claims of men to be free; the 

 progress of Science, especially of zoological Science, was successfully 

 resisted ; the labours of the Count de Buffon continued to be scan- 

 dalously mutilated by English compilers to suit the taste of the Eng- 

 lish public ; Paley's well-written, but superficial, erroneous and pira- 

 tical compilation was the zoological text-book at the Universities, 

 and by all respectable, correctly thinking people looked on as 

 second only to Scripture ; Gibbon's name could only be mentioned 

 in a whisper, and to speak of Voltaire otherwise than to vituperate was 

 sure to entail on the speaker or writer a torrent of abuse. In the 

 meantime what did the great bulk of the people read on Zoology ? 

 Goldsmith's 'Animated Nature' and ' A History of the Three Hun- 

 dred Animals,' that being the limit as to what was " useful to be 

 known," and to which the English mind was permitted to aspire. 



That the condition of zoological Science has changed materially 

 since the period we speak of, even in England, is due to the labours 

 of one great mind, George Cuvier, the anatomist. Before his time na- 

 turalists were not anatomists; indeed, before his era true anatomy was 

 not understood ; what passed for anatomy was as an instrument and 

 method of discovery, wholly valueless in the hands of zoologists. 

 He discovered the descriptive, and applied it. The result was — 1st, 

 the placing living Zoology for the first time on a sound scientific 

 basis; 2ndly, the discovery of the signification of the fossil organic 

 world, — a discovery which in some respects stands unrivalled in hu- 

 man history ; 3rdly, a new "interpretation of Nature," which the phi- 

 losophic world objected to, even before the death of the immortal 

 author of the ( Ossemens Fossiles.' The facts he discovered are now 

 universally known, and therefore require no special notice here. To 

 these facts he of necessity tacked certain theories, or rather hypothe- 



