baron Georges Cuvier

“ It seems to me, that, when the animalcules which form the corals at the bottom of the ocean cease to live, their structures adhere to each other, by virtue either of the glutinous remains within, or of some property in salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed. Future races of these animalcules erect their habitations upon the rising bank, and die in their turn, to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours. ”

“ It is not here the statues of Polycletus that we admire, but the admirable monuments of the workmanship of Nature, taken from the ruins of the great Herculeum overwhelmed by the ocean, that we look upon with feelings of the deepest wonder and devotion. ”

“ Such are those celebrated Primitive Mountains which traverse our continents in different directions, raising themselves above the clouds, separating the basins of rivers from one another, affording, in their perennial snows, reservoirs which feed the springs, and forming, in some measure, the skeleton, and as it were the rough framework, of the Earth. ”

“ We remain in utter ignorance respecting the causes which have given rise to the variety in the mineral substances of which the strata are composed. We are even ignorant of the agents which may have held some of these substances in solution; and it is still disputed, respecting several of them, whether they have owed their origin to water or to fire. After all, philosophers are only agreed on one point, which is, that the sea has changed its place; and how should this have been known, unless by means of the fossil remains? ”

“ If it be so interesting to us to follow, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of extinct nations, why should it not also be so, to search, amid the darkness of the infancy of the Earth, for the traces of revolutions which have taken place anterior to the existence of all nations? ”

“ When the traveller passes over those fertile plains where gently flowing streams nourish in their course an abundant vegetation, and where the soil, inhabited by a numerous population, adorned with flourishing villages, opulent cities, and superb monuments, is never disturbed, except by the ravages of war, or by the oppression of the powerful, he is not led to suspect that Nature also has had her intestine wars, and that the surface of the globe has been broken up by revolutions and catastrophes. ”

“ We can never be perfectly assured that certain species, and even genera, inhabiting the bottom of the sea, and occupying certain fixed spaces, for a longer or shorter time, may not have been driven away and supplanted by other species or genera.
In regard to quadrupeds, on the contrary, every thing is precise. The appearance of their bones in strata, and still more of their entire carcases, announces, either that the stratum itself which contains them has, at a former period, been laid dry, or, at least, that dry land must have existed in its neighbourhood. ”

“ Nor is there any trace of man. All the bones of our species that have been found along with those of which we have been speaking, have occurred accidentally [340] , and their number besides is [295] exceedingly small, which assuredly would not have been the case, if men had then been settled in the countries which these animals inhabited.
Where, then, was the human race at this period? Did the last and most perfect of the works of the Creator nowhere exist? Did the animals which now accompany him upon the globe, and of which there are no traces among these fossil remains, surround him? ”

“ The effect of different rocks upon the preservation and diminution of the moisture of fertile soil, influences vegetation in various degrees. The retentive power of the surface of rocks is of the greatest importance, where the soil consists chiefly of sand, through which the water percolates, and passes off entirely, unless it meets with a stratum of such a nature, as to obstruct its passage, or comes upon a surface of solid rock. The cause of the sterility of sandy plains is not merely their sandy nature, but also the great depth of the mass or rock capable of retaining the water. ”

“ It has been objected to the truth of the position, that the laws of natural combinations are the same as those which artificial combinations follow; that chemistry can decompose minerals; but that, in the formation of these combinations, natural laws have been in activity, which art would in vain attempt to reproduce: but this objection is groundless. The chemical affinity which acts in artificial combinations is a power of nature, as well as the affinity which regulates the composition of natural combinations: chemical affinity, in general, is a quality of matter. ”

“ What astonishes us is, that, among all these mammifera, the greater number of which have their congeners at the present day in the warm parts of the globe, there has not been a single quadrumanous animal,—that there has not been collected a single bone or a single tooth of an ape or monkey, not so much even as a bone or a tooth belonging to an extinct species of these animals. ”

“ It is from him, and from him alone, that we date the commencement of real geology, in so far as concerns the mineral nature of the strata: but neither he nor Saussure have determined the fossil organic species occurring in each kind of stratum, with the accuracy which has become necessary, now that the number of animals already known is so great.
Other naturalists, it is true, have examined the the fossil remains of organised bodies; they have collected and figured them by thousands, and their works will serve as so many precious collections of materials. ”

“ The new bank is not long in being visited by sea-birds: salt plants take root upon it, and a soil begins to be formed; a cocoa-nut, or the drupe of a pandanus, is thrown on shore; land birds visit it, and deposit the seeds of shrubs and trees; every high tide, and still more every gale, adds something to the bank; the form of an island is gradually assumed; and last of all comes man to take possession. ”

“ Among these revolutions of nature, we never reckon common inundations, such as take place at present from water overflowing its boundaries, though these also may produce devastation whose effects remain visible for an hundred years. But, in mountainous districts, another kind of aqueous eruption makes its appearance, and may be classed along with the traditions of a deluge. We very frequently, for instance, observe the valleys of high mountains forming a range of basins separated from one another by shorter or longer defiles, and opening through the last defile into a wider valley, or a marsh. ”

“ Born, says Humboldt, on the sandy plains of the Baltic, and until the age of eighteen, not knowing any other rock than these scattered blocks, I could not but feel curious to know whether the new world presented any thing of a similar nature. ”

“ He who reflects on the devastation caused by earthquakes, inundations and the fall of mountains, even though they are merely local appearances confined to particular quarters, cannot help putting the question to himself, how the order, regularity and connection exhibited by strata of rocks, could in any measure exist, if the same or similar accidents had happened throughout the whole world, and if mechanical power had operated with such energy, and to such an extent? ”

“ Fossil organic remains are the relics of a primeval world long since gone past, proclaiming with a loud voice the instability of earthly affairs, and impressing upon the minds of those who seriously consider them, sentiments of piety and feelings of devotion. ”

“ Thus are formed those hillocks of sand, named Downs, which, if the industry of man does not fix them by suitable plants, move slowly, but invariably, toward the interior of the country, and overwhelm fields and dwellings, because the same wind that raises the sand of the beach upon the down, throws that of its summit in the opposite direction from the sea. When the nature of the sand, and that of the water which is raised with it, are such as to form a durable cement, the shells and bones, thrown upon the beach, become incrusted with it. ”

“ If, according to the supposition of Cuvier, the earth’s surface inhabited at the commencement of the latter deluge has become the [432] present bed of the sea, and the former bed of the sea has become the present dry land, then, according to the present state of geography, though only conjectural, we should be able to point out such portions of the earth as were overwhelmed by the catastrophe; and yet we have never heard that any one has hazarded such an experiment. In the constitution of the present habitable globe, we find no proofs remaining of such a revolution. ”

“ Have the primitive mountains of our globe, whose form necessarily supposes a fluid state, been dissolved in water; or has the temperature of our earth been raised to such a degree, that the substances of which our primitive mountains are formed have become fluid? This question has been differently answered, and the solutions given have been attempted to be supported in proportion as the observation of geological facts, and the inquiries instituted with reference to the chemical combinations which compose the earth, have been developed. ”

“ If, then, our continents were as ancient as has been pretended, no traces of the habitation of men would appear on any part of the western bank of the Nile, which is exposed to this scourge of the sands of the desert. The existence, therefore, of such monuments attests the successive progress of the encroachments of the sand; and those parts of the bank, formerly inhabited, will for ever remain arid and waste. ”

“ The smallest articulating surface of bone, or the smallest apophysis, has a determinate character, relative to the class, the order, the genus, and the species to which it belonged; insomuch, that when one possesses merely a well preserved extremity of a bone, he can, by careful examination, and the aid of a tolerable analogical knowledge, and of accurate comparison, determine all these things with as much certainty as if he had the entire animal before him. ”

“ Even if it should prove true, which I am far from believing to be the case, that the fossil elephants, rhinoceroses, elks, and bears, differ no more from those at present existing, than the present races of dogs differ from one another, this would not furnish a sufficient reason for inferring the general identity of the species, because the races of dogs have been subjected to the influence of domestication, which these other animals neither did nor could experience. ”