ame kind. In the stricter
sciences, the 'Principia' of Newton, and in later times its continuation
and extension in La Place's 'Mecanique Celeste;' in intellectual
philosophy, Locke's celebrated work; in oratory, Demosthenes; in poetry,
Homer, leave all competitors behind by the common consent of mankind;
and Cuvier's researches in fossil osteology will probably be reckoned to
prefer an equal claim to distinction among the works on comparative
anatomy."

"If," says Cuvier, "you have but the extremity of a bone well preserved,
you may, by attention, consideration, and the aid of resources which
analogy furnishes to skill, determine all the rest as well as if you had
the entire skeleton submitted to you."

The great scientific value of the work lies in its comparative anatomy,
creating as it were (as we have said) the science of palaeontology at a
leap; but there are in it also sundry other philosophical deductions in
geology, such as the following: that in the strata called primitive
there are no remains of life or organized existence;--that all organized
existences were not created at the same time, but at different times,
probably very remote from each other, vegetables before animals, the
mollusca and fishes before reptiles, and the latter before the
mammalia;--that the transition limestone exhibits remains of the lowest
forms of existence; and the chalk and clay conceal the remains of
fishes, reptiles, and quadrupeds, beings of a former order of things,
which have now disappeared;--that among fossil remains no vestige
appears of man or his works; that the fossil remains in the more recent
strata are those which approach nearest to the present type of the
corresponding living species; and that these strata show the former
prevalence of fresh water as well as sea-water.

The extraordinary sagacity of Cuvier, coupled with his extensive
knowledge, qualified him for the execution of this herculean task. His
power of geological classification sprang out of his zooelogical skill,
and he was a great pioneer in previously unexplored fields of research,
where relations between the organic and inorganic changes of the earth
were revealed to the eye of the philosopher. "His guiding ideas had been
formed, his facts had been studied, by the assistance of all the
sciences which could be made to bear upon them. In his geological labors
he seems to see some beautiful temple, not only firm and fair in itself,
but decorated with scu