Lyell mentions the discovery of some bones of one of these gigantic birds (Gastornis) in a bed of the rolled chalk flints which form the base of the Paris series, resting immediately on the chalk; one of the first inhabitants perhaps to people some island of chalk just emerged from the waters, and under which lay the bones of the mighty Dinosaurs, and in which were embedded those of sea birds that had ranged, like the albatross and petrel, over the wide expanse of the Cretaceous ocean. These waders, however, like the tortoises and crocodiles and small marsupial mammals, form a link of connection in type at least between the Eocene and the Cretaceous, for bones of wading birds have been found in the Greensands indicating their existence before the close of the Mesozoic. The researches of Baron Cuvier in the bones collected in the quarries of Montmartre were regarded as an astonishing triumph of comparative anatomy; and familiar as we now are with similar and yet more difficult achievements, we can yet afford to regard with admiration the work of the great French naturalist as it is recorded in its collected form in his "Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles," published in 1812. His clear and philosophical views as to the plan perceptible in nature, his admirable powers of classification, his acute perception of the correlation of parts in animals, his nice discrimination of the resemblances and differences of fossil and recent structures, and of the uses of these,--all mark him as one of the greatest minds ever devoted to the study of natural science. It is obvious, that had his intellect been occupied by the evolutionist metaphysics which pass for natural science with too many in our day, he would have effected comparatively little; and instead of the magnificent museum in the "Règne Animal" and the "Ossemens Fossiles," we might have had wearisome speculations on the derivation of species. It is reason for profound thankfulness that it was not so; and also that so many great observers and thinkers of our day, like Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell, Owen, Dana, and Agassiz, have been allowed to work out their researches almost to completion before the advent of those poisoned streams and mephitic vapours which threaten the intellectual obscuration of those who should be their successors.