dy made many persons believe that it is
possible to answer the most difficult and often insoluble problems in
palaeontology, without having made any preliminary study, with the aid of
dividers, and, on the other hand, discouraging the Blumenbachs and
Soemmerings from giving their attention to this kind of work."

Huxley has, _inter alia_, put the case in a somewhat similar way, to
show that the law should at least be applied with much caution to
unknown forms:

"Cuvier, in the _Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe_,
strangely credits himself, and has ever since been credited by others,
with the invention of a new method of palaeontological research. But if
you will turn to the _Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles_, and watch
Cuvier not speculating, but working, you will find that his method is
neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his
famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of
stone to the pelvis which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he
or any one else knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule,
constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply
because experience has shown that these two structures are cooerdinated"
(_Science and Hebrew Tradition. Rise and Progress of Paleontology_ 1881,
p. 23).

[99] _History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery_ (1879).

[100] The following statement of Cuvier's views is taken from Jameson's
translation of the first _Essay on the Theory of the Earth_, "which
formed the introduction to his _Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles_,"
the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the
publication of the _Hydrogeologie_. The original I have not seen, but I
have compared Jameson's translation with the sixth edition of the
_Discours_ (1820).

[101] Cuvier, in speaking of these revolutions, "which have changed the
surface of our earth," correctly reasons that they must have excited a
more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine
animals. "As these revolutions," he says, "have consisted chiefly in
changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all
the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption over the land was
general, they must have destroyed the entire class, or, if confined only
to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed at least all
the species inhabiting these continents, without having