84 TERTIARY SERIES. 
of the legs and thighs, and every connecting 
portion of the extremities, were found set together 
precisely as I had arranged them, before my 
conjectures were verified by the discovery of the 
parts entire : in short, each species was, as it 
were, reconstructed from a single one of its com- 
ponent elements." (Cuvier's Ossemens Fossiles, 
1812, tom. iii. Introduction, p. 3, 4.) 
Thus, by placing before his readers the 
progress of his discovery, and restorations of 
unknown species and genera, in the same 
irregular succession in which they occurred to 
him, he derives from this disorder the strongest 
demonstration of the accuracy of the principles 
which formed his guide throughout the whole 
enquiry ; the last found fragments confirming 
the conclusions he had drawn from those first 
brought to light, and his retrograde steps being 
as nothing, in comparison with his predictions 
which were verified. 
Discoveries thus conducted, demonstrate the 
constancy of the laws of co-existence that have 
ever pervaded all animated nature, and place 
these extinct genera in close connexion with the 
living orders of Mammalia. 
We may estimate the number of the animals 
collected in the gypsum of Mont Martre, from 
the fact, stated by Cuvier, that scarcely a block 
is taken from these quarries which does not 
disclose some fragment of a fossil skeleton. 
Millions of such bones, he adds, must have been 
