branches of the animal world are the _vertebrata_, _mollusca_,
_articulata_, and _radiata_.

Comparative anatomy found in Cuvier a student who appreciated its
importance and revived its efficiency and honors. He saw more distinctly
than anyone before, that large classes of animals, when carefully
examined, are but modifications of a common type; that, for example,
there is after all a strong resemblance, when their skeletons are looked
at, between a man and a bird, and also a complete analogy between the
human skull and the head of a fish. It was in the pursuit after such
analogies that Cuvier was led into the track where he found the basis of
his new anatomical classifications.

For his wonderful volumes on fossil animals, Cuvier had made some
preparation by an essay, presented in 1810 to the Academy, on the
geology of the basin of Paris, a district singularly rich in fossil
remains. Montmartre and its vicinity, covered with buildings and crowded
with people, would not strike many observers as a promising field for
scientific exploration; but it is the peculiarity of genius to read
instruction where others can find only a blank, or a record of
commonplace character. Cuvier discovered in the geological construction
and the fossil remains of the Paris basin, elements for the solution of
the most critical scientific questions, relative not only to that
locality, but to the globe at large. Long before, he had begun to
treasure up facts, the collocation of which ultimately constituted his
marvellous additions to human knowledge. In 1800 he finds a few teeth,
in following years a few bones; and after many years' patience and skill
he ascertains and demonstrates the existence and place of a number of
tapir-like animals which he classed as _Lophiodon Paleotherium_ and
_Anoplotherium_, formerly abounding on the banks of the ponds which have
left their mud and marl in the tertiary strata of the Paris basin. His
anticipations seemed like prophecies, based, as they were, on a tooth or
a bone; but subsequent discoveries enabled him to verify them all, so
that they became parts of scientific and general knowledge. The effect
of these discoveries on the scientific world was prodigious.

"The great work of Cuvier," says Lord Brougham, "stands among those rare
monuments of human genius and labor, of which each department of
exertion can scarcely ever furnish more than one, eminent therefore
above all the other efforts made in the s