Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
I said just now that, in the existing Fauna, the group of pig-like animals and the group of ruminants are entirely distinct; but one of the first of Cuvier's discoveries was an animal which he called the Anoplotherium, and which proved to be, in a great many important respects, intermediate in character between the pigs on the one hand, and the ruminants on the other Thus, research into the history of the past did, to a certain extent, tend to fill up the breach between the group of ruminants and the group of pigs.
We were engaged to Cuvier's in the evening, and went first to M. Jullien's, in the Rue de l'Enfer, not far from the Jardin des Plantes, and there we saw one of the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary persons we have seen a Spaniard, squat, black-haired, black-browed, and black-eyed, with an infernal countenance, who has written the History of the Inquisition, and who related to us how he had been sent en penitence to a monastery by the Inquisition, and escaped by presenting a certain number of kilogrammes of good chocolate to the monks, who represented him as very penitent.
In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash.
But I dare not say more of this man, lest we should never get to Cuvier's, which, in truth, I thought we never should accomplish alive.
Much, indeed, depends upon the pleasant sound and the significance of a name; for an idea reaches the mind more easily when well expressed, and Cuvier's names were both simple and significant. His descriptions are also remarkable for their graphic precision, giving all that is essential, omitting all that is merely accessory.
The principal metacarpal and metatarsal bones are flatter than they are in any of the Equidoe; and the metacarpal bones are longer than the metatarsals, as in the Paloeotheria. In its general form, Plagiolophus resembles a very small and slender horse, and is totally unlike the reluctant, pig-like creature depicted in Cuvier's restoration of his Paloeotherium minus in the "Ossemens Fossiles."
The directors of the Society placed all their treasures at his command, and he now divided his time between hard study of languages and hard labor at the forge. To show how he passed his days, I will copy an entry or two from a private diary he then kept: "Monday, June 18. Headache; 40 pages Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; 64 pages French; 11 hours forging.
"Pardon me, I always bow before facts, no matter how unflattering, and I consider one of Cuvier's ideas worthy of just exactly eight degrees more of reverence than any phosphorescent sparkle which I might choose to hold up for public acceptance and guidance.
In consequence, the skin of the animal is constantly covered with a mucous matter, which, as Volta has proved, conducts electricity twenty or thirty times better than pure water. It appears uncertain whether the Trichiurus indicus has electrical properties or not. See Cuvier's Regne Animal volume 2.
From the time when Cuvier's wonderful researches upon the extinct Mammals of the Paris gypsum first made intercalary types known, and caused them to be recognized as such, the number of such forms has steadily increased among the higher Mammalia.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking