Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/777

Rh C U V I E R 741 the crocodilians of the Old and New Worlds, the fossil tapirs of France, the ornitholithes of Montmartre, &c., appeared the Lemons d Anatomie Comparce, a classical work, in the production of which Cuvier was assisted by Dumeril in the first two volumes, and by Duvernoy in three liter ones. In 1802 Cuvier became titular professor at tlie Jardin des PI antes ; and in the same year he was appointed commissary of the Institute to accompany the inspectors-general of public instruction. In this latter capacity he visited the south of France ; but he was in the early part of 1803 chosen perpetual secretary of the National Institute in the department of the physical and natural sciences, and he consequently abandoned the appointment just mentioned and returned to Paris. Shortly thereafter he married the daughter of M. Duvancel, a con tractor for the public taxes, by whom he had four children, all of whom predeceased him. Cuvier s scientific publications during the period posterior to the year 1801 covered a vast area, and can be but briefly alluded to here. In addition to memoirs on the teeth of fishes, on the &quot; Vermes &quot; with red blood (Annelides), on tlie crabs known to the ancients, on the Egyptian ibis, &c., Cuvier now devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiry, one dealing with the structure and classification of the Mollusca, a second treating of the com parative anatomy and systematic arrangement of the fishes, and the third concerned with fossil mammals and reptiles primarily, and secondarily with the osteology of living forms belonging to the same groups. As regards the first of these fields of investigation, Cuvier published a long series of papers on the mollusca, which began as early as 1792, and dealt with almost all the groups now admitted into this sub-kingdom, with the exception of the Polyzoa. Most of these memoirs were published in the Annales du Museum between 1802 and 1815, and they were sub sequently collected into the well-known and invaluable Memoires pour servir a 1 IIistoire et a I Anatomie des Mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817. In the department of fishes, Cuvier s researches, begun in 1801, finally culminated in the publication of the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons. This magnificent work contained descriptions of 5000 species of fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and Valenciennes, its publication (so far as the former was concerned) extending over the years 1828-31. Paleontology was always a favourite study with Cuvier, and the department of it dealing with the Mammalia may be said to have been essentially created and established by him. In this region of investigation he published a long list of memoirs, partly relating to the bones of extinct animals, and partly detailing the results of observations on the skeletons of living animals specially examined with a view of throwing light upon the structure and affinities of the fossil forms. In the second category must be placed a number of papers relating to the osteology of the Rhinoceros Indicus, the tapir, II y rax Capensis, the hippopotamus, the sloths, the manatee, &c. In the former category must be classed an even greater number of memoirs, dealing with the extinct mammals of the Eocene beds of Montmartre, the fossil species of hippopotamus, the Didelphys gypsorum, the Megalonyx, the Megatherium, the cave-hyaena, the extinct species of rhinoceros, the cave- bear, the mastodon, the extinct species of elephant, fossil species of manatee and seals, fossil forms of crocodilians, chelonians, fishes, birds, &c. The results of Cuvier s principal palseontological and geological investigations were ultimately given to the world in the form of two separate works. One of these is the celebrated Recherches sur les Ossemens jossiles de Quadrupedes, in fuur volumes quarto, published in Paris in 1812, with subsequent editions in 1821 and 1825; rnd the other is his Discours sur les Revolutions de la surface du Globe, in one volume octavo, published in Paris in 1825. Apart from his own original investigations in zoology and palaeontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official connected with public education generally ; and much of this work appeared ultimately in a published form. Thus, in 1808 he was placed by Napoleon upon the council of the Imperial University, and in this capacity he presided (in the years 1809, 1811, and 1813) over commissions charged to examine the state of the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the Alps and the Rhine which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this subject were published by him. In his capacity, again, of perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of eloges historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but he -was the author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural sciences, the most important of these being his celebrated Rapport historique sur le progres des sciences Physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810. No work of Cuvier, however, has attained a higher reputation than his famous Regne Animal distribue d apres son Organisation. The first edition of this appeared in four octavo volumes in 1817 ; the second, in five volumes, was published in 1829-30. In this classical work, Cuvier embodied the results of the whole of his previous researches on the structure of living and fossil animals, as giving con firmation and fixity to that system of classification of which he was the originator, and the main features of which still subsist. The whole of this work was his own, with the exception of the Insecta, in which he was assisted by his friend Latreille. The rest of Cuvier s life, apart from his scientific labours, must be very briefly told. By the unanimous consent of the learned world, he was now regarded as the most eminent of living naturalists, and the scientific honours which he received are beyond enumeration. Nor did he fail to meet amongst his own countrymen always ready to recognize ability, genius, energy, and persever ance with that public acknowledgment of his merits which he had so richly deserved. Prior to the fall of Napoleon (1814) he had been admitted to the Council of State, and his position remained unaffected by the restora tion of the Bourbons. He was elected chancellor of the university, in which capacity he acted as interim president of the Council of Public Instruction, whilst he also, as a Lutheran, superintended the faculty of Protestant theology. In 1819 he was appointed president of the Committee of the Interior, which office he retained until his death. In 1826 he was made grand officer of the Legion of Honour; arid in 1831 he was raised by Louis Philippe to the rank of peer of France, and was subsequently appointed president of the Council of State. In the beginning of 1832, he was nominated to the Ministry of the Interior, but the end was now near. On the 13th of May in this year, after a brief illness, commencing in paralysis of the throat, and rapidly implicating the respiratory organs, Cuvier passed away, his last surviving child having preceded him no less than five years. Eminent as he was in various departments of adminis tration, it will be as a naturalist and paleontologist that the memory of Cuvier will be preserved. The results which he accomplished in the sciences of zoology and palaeontology were, however, so vast and varied that it is only possible to indicate in a general manner the more important of them. These results fall naturally under three heads. In the first place, as regards systematic zoology, he effected