One of the most distinguished of zoologists, with unsurpassed gifts as a
teacher and expositor. He did great service in gaining a place for
science in ordinary education and in popular estimation. No one
championed Evolutionism with more courage and skill.]
[Illustration: BARON CUVIER, 1769-1832
One of the founders of modern Comparative Anatomy. A man of gigantic
intellect, who came to Paris as a youth from the provinces, and became
the director of the higher education of France and a peer of the Empire.
He was opposed to Evolutionist ideas, but he had anatomical genius.]
[Illustration: AN ILLUSTRATION SHOWING VARIOUS METHODS OF FLYING AND
SWOOPING
Gull, with a feather-wing, a true flier. Fox-bat, with a skin-wing, a
true flier. Flying Squirrel, with a parachute of skin, able to swoop
from tree to tree, but not to fly. Flying Fish, with pectoral fins used
as volplanes in a great leap due to the tail. To some extent able to
sail in albatros fashion.]
Finally, it is worth dwelling on the risks of terrestrial life, because
they enable us better to understand why so many land animals have become
burrowers and others climbers of trees, why some have returned to the
water and others have taken to the air. It may be asked, perhaps, why
the land should have been colonised at all when the risks and
difficulties are so great. The answer must be that necessity and
curiosity are the mother and father of invention. Animals left the water
because the pools dried up, or because they were overcrowded, or because
of inveterate enemies, but also because of that curiosity and spirit of
adventure which, from first to last, has been one of the spurs of
progress.