[Reviews of works by George Cuvier].

Date:
[1830?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Reviews of works by George Cuvier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    at Haerlem, where it is preserved in the Museum, and shewn to to be, what he had previously announced it to be, a gigantic salamander. Cuvier examined at Pavia the collection of fossil bones brought from the Island of Cerigo, and asserted by Spallanzani to be remains of the human species, and found that not a single fragment of them had ever formed a part of a human skeleton, but were all remains of ruminating animals. He has determined nearly twelve species of the extinct genus Palaeotherium, some of which were nearly as large as a rhino- ceros ; they appear from the shells which are found along with their bones, to have frequented the banks of rivers and marshes. The immense accumulations of bones found in the caves of Gaylenreuth, on the frontiers of Bayreuth, Cuvier found to have belonged almost entirely to extinct species of bears, which must have lived and died peaceably in the situations where we now discover their remains. The remarkable fossil animal of South America, the Megatherium, which measures twelve feet in length, and six or seven in height; and the Megalonyx, nearly as large, Cuvier has ascertained to have been closely allied, in their general characters, to the sloths and ant-eaters of that country. He has found the bones of a species of opossum in the gypsum quarries of Paris, and thus confuted the opinion of those who maintained all such bones to have been flooded north from Asia, as the animals of this genus are inhabitants only of the New World. Two species of seals have been discovered by Cuvier in the coarse marine lime- stone of the department of the Maine and Loire, one of which is nearly three times as large as the common species still inha- biting our seas, and in the same locality he has found two unknown species of Lamantins. His labours have been scarcely less productive in the class of reptiles, of which he has pointed out many extraordinary and gigantic species found in a fossil state. From the examination of the numerous extinct species of animals found in the gypsum quarries of Montmartre, Cuvier was naturally led to study the nature and superposition of the various strata containing them, and in conjunction with M. • Brongniart, Professor of Mineralogy, he undertook a laborious and extensive examination of the geological structure of the Paris basin, and of the surrounding country. The results of their investigations form an important part of the great work on Fossil Organic Remains, and one of the most valuable con- tributions which geology has ever received. They have shown the country around that capital to be formed by a succession of marine and fresh-water deposits, as if by the flux and efflux : of salt and fresh water over that extensive district. Above the chalk,