il shells of Mayence (1806); and on a new genus (_Clotho_) of
bivalve shells.

[95] _Sur les ossemens qui se trouvent dans le gyps de Montmartre_
(_Bulletin des sciences pour la Societe philomatique_, tomes 1, 2, 1798,
pp. 154-155).

[96] The following account is translated from the fourth edition of the
_Ossemens fossiles_, vol. 1., 1834, also the sixth edition of the
_Discours_, separately published in 1830. It does not differ materially
from the first edition of the _Essay on the Theory of the Earth_,
translated by Jameson, and republished in New York, with additions by
Samuel L. Mitchell, in 1818.

[97] In the first edition of the _Theorie_ he says fifteen years,
writing in 1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to
thirty.

[98] De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier's law and of his
assumptions; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says:

"Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. G.
Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in a
kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then
almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections
which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a
comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without
having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism
which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, because
he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science of
organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did.
Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his
assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a
skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously correlated
in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong
imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in
an animal well known and studied even to satiety; but for an unknown
animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the
anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anatomists
like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d'Azyr, Blumenbach, Soemmering, and
Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier would have been
himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at his word, and besides
it is this assertion which will remain formulated in the mouths of the
ignorant, and which has alrea