PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES, 
267 
of the older tertiary rocks were described as animals belonging to extinct genera. 
The erratic blocks, scattered over the surface of all continents, were adduced as 
evidence of the Noakian deluge recorded in the inspired narrative. Having made 
these general observations, Mr. Wright proceeded to describe the Mammalia 
whose remains abound in the older tertiary rocks, the discovery of which was 
due to the late Baron Cuvier ; the genius and industry of this great philosopher 
was in none of the departments of animated nature more strikingly illustrated 
than in his laborious and successful researches into the laws that regulate the 
development of animal structure, by which he dispelled, as it were, the mists 
that had enshrouded his predecessors in the same path of inquiry.* The unity 
of organic structure was exemplified by a train of reasoning intended to show 
that every part of animated bodies has an invariable and constant relation to all 
the other parts of their economy, and that any deviation in one organ or system 
produces a corresponding modification in all the others; this was strikingly 
illustrated by a general sketch of the organization of a carnivorous and of a 
herbivorous quadruped. The lecturer said that the same laws pervaded the most 
simple as well as the most complicated animals ; they were the same in the Worm 
as in Man himself; but that the limits of his present lecture would not permit 
him to enter at greater length on this fascinating branch of philosophical Zoology. 
The extinct genera of the first fresh-water formation were described, and the 
generic characters of Palcuotherium , Anoplotherium , Anthracotherium , Chiropo- 
tamus , and Adapis , illustrated by beautiful plaster-casts of the skulls of some 
of these animals, which had been presented to the Institution by Dr. Chi¬ 
chester. Of the new genus established by Professor Kaup, the Dinotkerium » 
the remains of which were discovered at Epplesheim, in Hesse Darmstadt, Mr. 
W right gave a general sketch, and of the supposed form and habits of this 
animal, from Kaup’s restoration, together with Dr. Buckland’s conjectures. 
From the opinions of these professors the lecturer however dissented, and adduced 
* The lecturer here introduced the strikingly grand passage from this great zoologist’s introduc¬ 
tion to his description of the bones from the freshwater strata of JVlont Martre “ I found 
myself placed as in a great charnel house, surrounded by the mutilated fragments of a hundred 
skeletons, belonging to more than twenty different kinds of animals, piled confusedly around one; 
itfwas required that every one should be joined to its fellow; it'was a resurrection in miniature, but 
the immutable laws prescribed to living beings were my directors. At the voice of Comparative 
Anatomy—each bone—each fragment of a bone resumed its place. I have no expressions to describe 
the pleasure experienced in observing as I discovered one character, how all the consequences which 
I predicted from it were successively developed. The feet were in accordance with the character 
announced by the teeth—the teeth in harmony with [those indicated beforehand by the teeth— 
the bones of the legs and thighs, and every thing that ought to unite these two extreme parts, were 
conformable to each other precisely as I had arranged them before my conjectures were verified 
by the discovery of the parts entire—in a word, the animal was reconstructed, as it were, from a 
single bone of its component parts.” 
