The preliminary discourse in the first volume is a masterly exposition of the revolutions which the crust of the earth has undergone: revolutions to which the animal creation has been equally subject. It is written with great clearness and elegance, and is so much calculated to interest general readers as well as men of science, that it has been translated into most of the European languages. The English translation, by Professor Jameson, published under the title of ‘Essay on the Theory of the Earth,’ has gone through several editions. In his examination of the fossil bones found near Paris, Cuvier was led to inquire into the geological structure of the country around that capital. He assumed M. Alexander Bronguiart as his associate, and the result of their joint labours is contained in one of the volumes of the work now under consideration, in an Essay on the Mineralogy of the Environs of Paris. This essay formed a great epoch in geological science, for it was then that the grand division of the tertiary formations was first shown to form a distinct class. A new direction and a fresh impulse was thus given to geological investigations; and many of the most important general truths at which we have now arrived in this science, have been established by discoveries to which the essay of Cuvier and Bronguiart led the way. In 1817 appeared the first edition of the ‘Règne Animal,’ in four octavo volumes, one of which was written by the celebrated naturalist Latreille. This work gives an account of the structure and history of all existing and extinct races of animals: it has subsequently been enlarged. Cuvier began, in conjunction with M. Valenciennes, an extensive general work on fishes, which it was calculated would extend to twenty volumes. Eight only have appeared; for the embarrassments among the Parisian booksellers, in 1830, suspended the publication, and it has thus been left incomplete; but a great mass of materials was collected, and we may hope that they will yet be published. In addition to these great undertakings, he had been for years collecting materials for a stupendous work, a complete system of comparative anatomy, to be illustrated by drawings from nature, and chiefly from objects in the Museum at the Jardin des Plantes. Above a thousand drawings, many executed by his own hand, are said to have been made. Looking back to what he had already accomplished, and considering his health and age, for he was only in his sixty-third year, it was not unreasonable in him to hope to see the great edifice erected, of which he had laid the foundation and collected the materials. But unfortunately for the cause of science it was ordered otherwise, and there is something particularly touching in the last words he uttered to his friend the Baron Pasquier, and in sounds, too, scarcely articulate, from the malady which so suddenly cut short his career—“_Vous le voyez, il y a loin de l’homme du