Marie-Henri Ducrotay de Blainville. 207 
He contends fora single and simultaneous creation—a 
first and complete population, subjectto incessant extinctions ; 
and he requires only slow and ordinary causes to account for 
these repeated destructions. 
What! he exclaims, you pretend that at each revolution 
you suppose, the Great Artificer of created things recom- 
menced his work! 
But remark, in the first place, the general resemblance 
which connects living with lost species. In spite of all your 
skill, you have not been able to distinguish, by a certain 
feature, the fossil elephant from the existing elephant of the 
Indies. 
_ You yourselves admit that, among fossil animals, many 
are to be found which differ in nothing from living animals. | 
The facts on which you found your theory are therefore 
insufficient and incomplete facts. Incomplete facts cannot 
be set as a limit to our conjectures. . 
_ In the absence of complete facts, which he was no more 
possessed of than Cuvier, M. de Blainville sought for a su- 
perior reason which might in his estimation occupy their place, 
and free his impatient mind from the annoyance of waiting, 
This superior reason appeared to him to be found in the wnity 
of the kingdom. And here science is indebted to him for one 
of its great steps in advance. | 
_ As long as he confined himself to the study of existing 
species, the animal series presented to him everywhere lacu- 
nx and voids. In every quarter beings were wanting. It was 
then that, with the glance of genius, he saw and recognised 
in lost Nature the beings which were wanting in living Nature, 
and that he intercalated with surprising address the fossil 
Species among the existing species, seizing from that moment, 
and being the first among all naturalists to disclose to us at 
last, the unity of the kingdom. 
The animal kingdom is therefore one,—the unity of the 
kingdom seems be to the first demonstrated point of the wnity 
of the creation. 
After having explained the contrary opinions of the two 
authors, I proceed to examine their systems, which are not 
less so. | 
