ing faculties.

We have seen a system in which all is regularity and order, and all
flows from, and is obedient to, a divine code of laws of unbending
operation. We are to understand from what has been laid before us that
man, with his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural problem of
which the elements can be taken cognisance of by science, and that all
the secular destinies of our race, from generation to generation, are
but evolutions of a law statuted and sustained in action by an all-wise
Deity.

There may be a faith derived from this view of Nature sufficient to
sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the calamities,
the woes and pains of this sphere of being. For let us but fully and
truly consider what a system is here laid open to view and we cannot
well doubt that we are in the hands of One who is both able and willing
to do us the most entire justice. Surely, in such a faith we may well
rest at ease, even though life should have been to us but a protracted
malady. Thinking of all the contingencies of this world as to be in time
melted into or lost in some greater system, to which the present is only
subsidiary, let us wait the end with patience and be of good cheer.

GEORGES CUVIER

The Surface of the Globe

Georges Cuvier was born Aug. 24, 1769, at Montbeliard, France. He
had a brilliant academic career at Stuttgart Academy, and in 1795,
at the age of twenty-six, he was appointed assistant professor of
comparative anatomy at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris,
and was elected a member of the National Institute. From this date
onwards to his death in 1832, his scientific industry was
remarkable. Both as zoologist and palaeontologist he must be
regarded as one of the greatest pioneers of science. He filled many
important scientific posts, including the chair of Natural History
in the College de France, and a professorship at the Jardin des
Plantes. In 1808 he was made member of the Council of the Imperial
University; and in 1814, President of the Council of Public
Instruction. In 1826 he was made grand officer of the Legion of
Honour, and five years later was made a peer of France. The
"Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe," published in
1825, is essentially a preliminary discourse to the author's
celebrated work, "Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles de
Quadrupedes