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Updated: May 11, 2025
On my shewing him the fish figured in Sir Thomas Mitchell's work he knew only the cod. Of the fish figured in Cuvier's works he gave specific names to those he recognised, as the hippocampus, the turtle, and several sea fish, as the chetodon, but all the others he included under one generic name, that of "guia," fish.
Cuvier's kind reception was but an earnest of the affectionate interest he seems from the first to have felt in him. After a few days he gave Agassiz and his artist a corner in one of his own laboratories, and often came to encourage them by a glance at their work as it went on.
The alligators, on the contrary, have broad pike-shaped noses, with teeth very unequal, and one large one on each side of the lower jaw, that, when the mouth shuts, passes not into a groove as with the crocodile but, into a hole or socket in the upper jaw. These are Monsieur Cuvier's distinctions; which he takes a world of pains to point out and prove.
Notwithstanding this circumstance, modern classificatory method and nomenclature have largely grown out of the work of Linnæus: the modern conception of biology, as a science, and of its relation to climatology, geography, and geology, are, as largely, rooted in the results of the labours of Buffon; comparative anatomy and palæontology owe a vast debt to Cuvier's results; while invertebrate zoology and the revival of the idea of evolution are intimately dependent on the results of the work of Lamarck.
And here the visitor may well pause to think upon the zoological travels he has already made, from the mammalia, which present the highest types of animal life; through the sub-families of birds, which form Cuvier's secondary class of vertebrata, or animals with a back-bone; to the threshold of the room in which the tertiary class of back-boned animals are deposited.
As Joseph Hume observes, it makes no difference to us right or wrong, black or white when our countrymen are concerned. We do not pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part of Cuvier's performances; but we suspect that Coleridge's range in that respect was not much greater than our own.
In regard to thrushes, shrikes, and woodpeckers, see Mr. Blyth, in Charlesworth's 'Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. i. 1837, p. 304; also footnote to his translation of Cuvier's 'Regne Animal, p. 159. I give the case of Loxia on Mr. Blyth's information. On thrushes, see also Audubon, 'Ornith. Biog. vol. ii. p. 195.
Cuvier's disciples went beyond the doctrines of their master. He made certain reservations; they admitted none, and one of the most illustrious, Elie de Beaumont, rejected with scorn the possibility of the co-existence of man and the mammoth.
Thus, by the progress of knowledge, Cuvier's fourth distinction between the animal and the plant has been as completely invalidated as the third and second; and even the first can be retained only in a modified form and subject to exceptions. But has the advance of biology simply tended to break down old distinctions, without establishing new ones?
It is not upon any special features, then, that these largest divisions of the animal kingdom are based, but simply upon the general structural idea. Striking as this statement was, it was coldly received at first by contemporary naturalists: they could hardly grasp Cuvier's wide generalizations, and perhaps there was also some jealousy of the grandeur of his views.
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