"Cuvier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the dark; that inordinate curiosity is characteristic only of the man of science. Again the lily does not close with the appearance of the sun; for the flower often remains awake up to eleven in the forenoon. A French dictionary maker saw Cuvier, the Zoologist about the definition of the crab as 'a little red fish which walks backwards.' 'Admirable,' said Cuvier. 'But the crab is not necessarily little, nor is it red till boiled; it is not a fish, and it cannot walk backwards. But with these exceptions your definition is perfect.' ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... animal and vegetable worlds and the causes which have determined that condition, an argument has been put forward as an objection to evolution, which we shall have to consider very seriously. It is an argument which was first clearly stated by Cuvier in his criticism of the doctrines propounded by his great contemporary, Lamarck. The French expedition to Egypt had called the attention of learned men to the wonderful store of antiquities in that country, and there had been brought back to France numerous mummified ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... interesting; there is room for speculation and reflection, till the mind is lost in its own wanderings, which I consider one of the greatest delights of existence. We are indebted to the vast, comprehensive mind, and indefatigable labour of Cuvier, for the gleams of light which have lately burst upon us, and which have rendered what was before mere speculative supposition now a source of interesting and anxious investigation, attended with results that are as satisfactory ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... evolution school are strenuous in the belief that the evolution hypothesis overthrows the idea of archetypes, and plans of structure. But a true genealogy of animals and plants represents a natural system, and the types of animals, be they four, as Cuvier taught, or five, or more, are recognized by naturalists through the study of dry, hard, anatomical facts. Accepting, then, the type of articulates as founded in nature from the similar modes of development and points of structure perceived between ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the class Crustacea, which animals form the order Cirripedia (barnacles and acorn-shells), bear such an external resemblance to mollusks that they were actually classed by Cuvier in the class Mollusca. In some of them—the Barnacles which commonly attach themselves to the bottoms of ships—the head grows from above downwards to a relatively enormous degree, forming the long stalk or "peduncle," at the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... call "Nobody," behind; No star for London's feasts to-day, No moon of beauty, new this May, To lend the night her crescent ray;— Nothing, in short, for ear or eye, But veteran belles and wits gone by, The relics of a past beau-monde, A world like Cuvier's, long dethroned! Even Parliament this evening nods Beneath the harangues of minor Gods, On half its usual opiate's share; The great dispensers of repose, The first-rate furnishers of prose ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... d'intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement meme des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avis que c'etait de l'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chere. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en laissant a ses heritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture ou il avait existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes les nuits, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... confiance dans leur force en apprenant a nous connaitre. Sans doute on ne peut point conclure de quelques individus a l'espece entiere; mais on peut assurer sans rien hasarder, que le mouflon tient une des dernieres places parmis les mammiferes quant a l'intelligence.—" SAINT-HILIAR ET CUVIER, Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of France could boast of many men of great talent, such as La Harpe, who died during the Consulate, Ducis, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chenier, and Lemercier, yet they could not be compared with Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Fourcroy, Berthollet, and Cuvier, whose labours have so prodigiously extended the limits of human knowledge. No one, therefore, could murmur at seeing the class of sciences in the Institute take precedence of its elder sister. Besides, the First Consul was not sorry to show, by this arrangement, the slight estimation in which ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to help himself, or knowing a want unsatisfied. Now, thrown suddenly upon his own resources, homeless, friendless, forlorn, how could ever make his fortune in this bleak New England, for all he has, according to Cuvier, more brains in his head in proportion to his size than any other created being? I saw him already in midsummer, drenched with cold rains, chilled and perishing; but sharper eyes than mine had marked his flight, and a pair of swift hands plunged after him into the long grass that tangled his wings ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... It has since been figured, but not described, by Dr. Mitchell in the Transactions of the New York Society; and one very nearly resembling it has been described by Mr. Bennett with a figure, in the Geological Journal. The genus to which it belongs is most completely treated of by M. Cuvier, in the Memoires ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr Atherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling us that the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to the floor." We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact from Cuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be too picturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you will or no, to see an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy den in a menagerie, bathing his beard in ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... formation of the skull and teeth, must, from having four hands, be placed among the Quadrumana. They are nocturnal in their habits, very gentle and confiding, with apparently one exception, which is called the Vari. M. Frederic Cuvier has told us, that two of these being shut up in a cage together, one killed and eat his companion, leaving nothing but the skin. Two of them are remarkable for their slow, deliberate movements; and one of them, named the Lemur Tardigradus, was procured at Prince of Wales's ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... following out their dim suggestions, Some idly-curious hand may draw My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier Drew fish and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... In Makrizi's Description of Egypt we read: "Every year, upon a certain day, all the herons (Boukir, Ardea bubulcus of Cuvier) assemble at this mountain. One after another, each puts his beak into a cleft of the hill until the cleft closes upon one of them. And then forthwith all the others fly away But the bird which has been caught struggles until he dies, and there his body remains ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... which has never, to my knowledge, been noticed before. In the message, which, in pursuance of his first idea, adhered to by him for several years, was to be sent by means of numbers, every word is numbered conventionally except the proper name "Cuvier," and for this he put a number for each letter. How this was to be indicated was not made clear, but it is evident that he saw at once that all proper names could not be numbered; that some other means must be employed to indicate them; in other ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... sense view was adopted there was no science of palaeontology. Cuvier was the first great naturalist to devote particular attention to the mainly unrelated and unverified facts that had been discovered before his time. He was truly the originator of this branch of zooelogy, for he brought together the observations ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... heard repeated a saying of Mr. Wordsworth, that many men of this age had done wonderful things, as Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c.; but that Coleridge was the only wonderful man he ever knew. Something, of course, must be allowed in this as in all other such cases for the antithesis; but we believe the fact really to be, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and mental activity. But to comprehend fully the weight of this proof of their defective haematosis, it is necessary to bear in mind one of the great leading truths disclosed by comparative anatomy. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate beyond a doubt that muscular energy and activity are in direct proportion to the development and activity of the pulmonary organs. In his 29th lesson, vol. vii, p. 17, D'Anatomie Comparee, he says, "Dans les animaux vertebres cette quantite ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised by every one of us in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a particular kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... materials for regaining much lost antiquarian knowledge. For as the palaeontologist can sometimes reconstruct in full the types of extinct animals from a few preserved fragments of bones, possibly some future archaeological Cuvier may one day be able to reconstruct from these mythological fragments, and from other sources, far more distinct figures and forms than we at present possess of the heathen faith and rites of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... the beak, which in the sheathbill is short, stout, and pointed, and enveloped at the base by a waxy-looking sheath. Its feet are like those of a gallinaceous bird, yet one which I wounded took voluntarily to the water and swam off to a neighbouring point to rejoin its mate. Cuvier, besides erroneously mentioning that it is a native of New Holland, states that it feeds on carrion; the stomachs of two which I examined contained seaweed, limpets, and small quartz pebbles. The people here call it the rock-dove, and from its snow-white plumage it forms ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... day with M. and Madame Cuvier at the Jardin des Plantes, and saw the Museum, and everything in that celebrated establishment. On returning to the house, we found several people had come to spend the evening, and the conversation was carried on with a good deal of spirit; the Countess ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... celebrated men whom Coleridge detested, or seemed to detest—Paley, Sir Sidney Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord Donoughmore,) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy had been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was personal; and it tallies with this belief, that, in his earliest political tracts, Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his own joke, as if it had been a serious saying, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... nature; that each part of our story is linked by indissoluble bands with that which goes before, and with that which comes after. For the most part the discovery of this principle or that in a given sequence is no accident. Galileo and Keppler must precede Newton. Cuvier and Lyall must come before Darwin;—Which, after all, is no more than saying that in our Temple of Science, as in any other piece of architecture, the foundation must precede ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the great names of Aristotle, Cuvier, and von Baer, and leads easily to the more open vitalism of Lamarck and Samuel Butler. The typical representative of the second attitude is E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and this habit of thought has greatly influenced ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Cuvier, the celebrated naturalist, was singularly careful of his time, and did not like those who entered his house to deprive him of it. "I know," said he, "that Monsieur l'Abbe Hauy comes to see me; our conversation is an exchange; but I do not want a man to come and tell me whether it is hot ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various |
