baron Georges Cuvier

“ I am aware that some naturalists lay great stress upon the thousands of ages which they call into action by a dash of the pen; but, in such matters, we can only judge of what a long period of time might produce, by multiplying in idea what a less time produces. With this view, I have endeavoured to collect the most ancient documents relating to the forms of animals; and there are none which equal, either in antiquity or abundance, those that Egypt furnishes. It affords us, not only representations of animals, but even their identical bodies embalmed in its catacombs. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most important consideration, that which, in fact, is the chief object of all my researches, and which establishes their legitimate connection with the Theory of the Earth, is to ascertain in what strata each species is found, and whether there may be some general laws, relative either to the zoological subdivisions, or to the greater or less resemblance of the species to those of the present day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This new alluvial land, formed by the rivers and the sea, is of astonishing fertility, and is so much the more valuable, as the ancient soil of these countries, being covered with heaths and peat-mosses, is almost everywhere unfit for cultivation. The alluvial lands alone produce subsistence for the many populous cities that have been built along these coasts, since the middle age, and which perhaps would not have attained their present flourishing condition, without the aid of the rich deposits [131] which the rivers had prepared for them, and which they are continually augmenting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We can very easily imagine the astonishment which the appearance of horns so large, and of such strange form, must have excited in the minds of those who discovered them for the first time, and how readily they obtained a place in the hall of some adjoining mansion, where they were deposited as an ornament of great curiosity, from the contrast which they formed with the horns of the species of deer known at present. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With regard to the Indians, every body knows that Bailly, believing that the epoch which is used as a period of departure in some of their astronomical tables had been actually observed, has attempted to draw from thence a proof of the great antiquity of the science among this people, [195] or at least among the nation which had bequeathed them its knowledge. But the whole of this system, invented with so much labour, falls to the ground of itself, now that it is proved that this epoch has been adopted but of late, from calculations made backwards, and even false in their results. ”

“ We say for the last time, because, if we examine with still greater care those remains of organised bodies, we discover, in the midst of even the oldest strata of marine formation, other strata replete with animal or vegetable remains of terrestrial or fresh-water productions; and, amongst the more recent strata, or, in other words, those that are nearest the surface, there are some in which land animals are buried under heaps of marine productions. ”