tus, the skin is
smooth, and furnished with short loose processes; the filament on the
head is short, and terminated by a small knob of clustered minute
filaments; this is succeeded by two other processes, each resembling
a fin supported by a single ray, and fringed, especially towards its
upper part, by loose portions of skin; to these succeed the back fin,
supported, as usual, by many rays. The colour is pale, irregularly
blotched, spotted, and streaked with brown, the markings varying
considerably in different individuals; it is also dotted irregularly
with white. By these characters it may be known from the other species
of the genus, with which it appears to have been associated by
Linnaeus, under the common name of Lophius Histrio. It was first
scientifically distinguished by M. Bosc, a French naturalist, who
observed it, on his voyage to America, among the Sargasso weed: he
described and figured it, not without some imperfections, in the
Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle. It has since been figured,
but not described, by Dr. Mitchell in the Transactions of the New York
Society; and one very nearly resembling it has been described by Mr.
Bennett with a figure, in the Geological Journal. The genus to which
it belongs is most completely treated of by M. Cuvier, in the Memoires
du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle.

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SELECT BIOGRAPHY

[Illustration: Cuvier]

Cuvier, the great naturalist, paid the debt of nature in May last,
after a life devoted to science with an unwearied application and a
success exceeded by none in modern times. He was born at Montbelliard
in 1769, a year which gave to so many remarkable men--a Napoleon--a
Chateaubriand--a Wellington--a Humboldt, &c. and his first discoveries
were on the Mollusca, and shook to its base the zoological
classification which then universally prevailed.

Invited to Paris to fill the place of Professor of Comparative Anatomy
at the _Jardin des Plantes_, his lectures speedily drew crowds around
him, attracted by his popular eloquence and lucid arrangement. His
next work, _Lecons d'Anatomie Comparee_, 1805, was rewarded by the
Institute with the decennial prize for the work which had contributed
the most to our knowledge of the Natural Sciences during that period.
At the same period he published a series of Memoirs on the Anatomy of
the Mollusca, and devoted his attention to a detailed examination
of the fossil rema