312 PALEONTOLOGY. 



Hunter had been able to exclude from his careful outlook all possible 

 causes of deception, and had pronounced absolutely on the extinction of 

 species, the honest and competent commentator would feel bound to 

 quote from the eloquent < Epoques de la Nature,' Buffon's proposition, 

 " Qu'il y a eu des especes perdues, c'est-a-dire, des animaux qui ont 

 autrefois existe, et qui n' existent plus 1 ." 



But we may safely assert that neither assertions would have esta- 

 blished or made current the great idea. Palaeontology mast have de- 

 manded more determinate, fixed, and extensive foundations. 



Baron Cuvier, by his comparisons of the fossil bones and teeth of the 

 land- animals dug out of the gypsum quarries at Montmartre, first and 

 finally set at rest all doubts as to entire species and races of animals 

 having perished. The foundations of Palaeontology cannot be said to 

 have been laid before his time. 



Every science more or less depends upon another, and geology has 

 most of these interdependencies. A rich zoology in the number of 

 observed animals and their geographical relations, — a precise zoology in 

 regard to definitions of specific identities and differences, — were an essen- 

 tial preliminary to the determination of the specific relations of organic 

 remains. 



Now this truly scientific zoology was but dawning in the days of 

 Hunter : it is to the great Erench Natural History School, which suc- 

 ceeded Buffon and Linnaeus, that science is indebted for the state of 

 Natural History which made a scientific Palaeontology possible. Take 

 the distinction of the African and Indian elephants, e. g., and the 

 difference in the dentition of both, from that of the fossil northern 

 elephant, as exemplifications of the grounds on which specific differences 

 have been founded. In like manner the determination of the distinct 

 species of the living and extinct rhinoceroses on the Cuvierian basis was 

 indispensable for any correct inference from the fossil remains of that 

 genus. 



The fallacy of the reasoning from the fossils of the Elephant and 

 Rhinoceros, as to changes of climate, and the consequent invocation of 

 a change in the ecliptic, arose entirely from the defective state of 

 zoology and of comparative osteology and odontology at the time when 

 Hunter wrote. He accomplished vast things in his favourite science ; 

 he could not do all ! 



Far from offering any explanations, by revolutions in the surface 

 of the globe, &c, Hunter, after hypothetically suggesting the pos- 

 sibility of some species having become extinct, plainly states that 



' [Histoire Natiirelle, 4to. torn. v. p. 27 (Supplement), 1754.] 



