Cuvier became almost immediately famous on his arrival at Paris, and his career henceforward was one uninterrupted success. Those who wish to gain some insight into the causes of this success should read the letters to Pfaff, which indicate the passionate patience of his studies during the years 1788-1795, passed in obscurity on the Norman coast. Every animal he can lay hands on is dissected with the greatest care, and drawings are made of every detail of interest. Every work that is published of any note in his way is read, analyzed, and commented on. Lavoisier’s new system of chemistry finds in him an ardent disciple. Kielmeyer’s lectures open new vistas to him. The marvels of marine life, in those days so little thought of, he studies with persevering minuteness, and with admirable success. He dissects the cuttlefish, and makes his drawings of it with its own ink. He notes minute characters with the patience of a species-monger, whose sole ambition is to affix his name to some trifling variation of a common form; yet with this minuteness of detail he unites the largeness of view necessary to a comparative anatomist. “Your reflections on the differences between animals and plants,” he writes, “in the passage to which I previously referred, will be the more agreeable to me because I am at present working out a new plan of a general natural history. I think we ought carefully to seek out the relation of all existences with the rest of nature, and above all, to show their part in the economy of the great All. In this work I should desire that the investigator should start from the simplest things, such as air and water, and after having spoken of their influence on the whole, he should pass gradually to the compound minerals, from these to plants, and so on; and that at each stage he should ascertain the exact degree of composition, or, which is the same thing, the number of properties it presents over and above those of the preceding stage, the necessary effects of these properties, and their usefulness in creation. Such a work is yet to be executed. The two works of Aristotle, _De Historia Animalium_, and _De Partibus Animalium_, which I admire more each time that I read them, contain a part of what I desire, namely, the comparison of species, and many of the general results. It is, indeed, the first scientific essay at a natural history. For this reason it is necessarily incomplete, contains many inaccuracies, and is too far removed from a knowledge of physical laws.” He passes on from Aristotle to Pliny, Theophrastus, Discorides, Aldovrandus, Gesner, Gaspar Bauhin, and Ray, rapidly sketching the history of natural history as a science; and concluding with this criticism on these attempts at a nomenclature which neglected real science:—“These are the dictionaries of natural history; but when will the _language_ be spoken?”