ssed to build it up, nor
the criticisms which have been directed against it. It has to-day come
out of the struggle victoriously. A prodigious quantity of facts, of
comparative anatomy and of embryology, inexplicable without it, emerge
from the chaos and constitute a whole, truly and marvellously
homogeneous. Issued from the natural sciences, the doctrine of
evolution now overflows them and tends to embrace everything that
concerns man: history, sociology, political economy, psychology. The
moralists seek, and will surely find, compromises permitting ethical
laws to endure the rule of this overwhelming hypothesis.

Without going too far back into history, let us look towards the end
of the last century and the beginning of this. Cuvier, Lamarck,[2] and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] all preoccupied with general ideas, were
each trying to build up a doctrine. The theory of evolution was born
beneath the pen of Lamarck, but immediately fell under the attacks of
Cuvier.[4] It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having rescued
it from oblivion and of having initiated the movement which to-day
rules the natural sciences. Studies in embryology and anatomy are
rising without number beneath this impulse; and perhaps it may be said
that these new sciences, so fruitful in results, absorb a little too
much attention and leave in the shade subjects longer known, but
which, however, gain new interest by the way they fit into present
scientific theories.

[2] _Philosophie zoologique_, 2e edition, Paris, 1830;
_Histoire des Animaux sans Vertebres_, Introduction, 1835.

[3] _Philosophie anatomique_, 1818; _Zoologie generale_, 1841.

[4] _Le Regne Animal_, 1829; _Lecons d'Anatomie comparee_,
2e edition, 1835-46.

I wish to speak of the manners of animals; the facts regarding them
are of sufficient interest if we consider them one by one, and they
become much more interesting when we attempt to show the close way in
which they are bound together. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust
the subject; but if the entire task is too considerable, I may at
least hope to accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts which
may be brought together under the common title of Animal Industries.
Taken separately, they may be reproached with a certain anecdotal
character, but we cannot fail to agree that taken altogether they
constitute an important chapter in the sciences of life.

_The chief industries of Man._--