to his new classification, Cuvier's attention was called
constantly to the peculiar co-ordination of parts in each
individual organism. Thus an animal with sharp talons for
catching living prey--as a member of the cat tribe--has also
sharp teeth, adapted for tearing up the flesh of its victim, and
a particular type of stomach, quite different from that of
herbivorous creatures. This adaptation of all the parts of the
animal to one another extends to the most diverse parts of the
organism, and enables the skilled anatomist, from the observation
of a single typical part, to draw inferences as to the structure
of the entire animal--a fact which was of vast aid to Cuvier in
his studies of paleontology. It did not enable Cuvier, nor does
it enable any one else, to reconstruct fully the extinct animal
from observation of a single bone, as has sometimes been
asserted, but what it really does establish, in the hands of an
expert, is sufficiently astonishing.

"While the study of the fossil remains of the greater quadrupeds
is more satisfactory," he writes, "by the clear results which it
affords, than that of the remains of other animals found in a
fossil state, it is also complicated with greater and more
numerous difficulties. Fossil shells are usually found quite
entire, and retaining all the characters requisite for comparing
them with the specimens contained in collections of natural
history, or represented in the works of naturalists. Even the
skeletons of fishes are found more or less entire, so that the
general forms of their bodies can, for the most part, be
ascertained, and usually, at least, their generic and specific
characters are determinable, as these are mostly drawn from their
solid parts. In quadrupeds, on the contrary, even when their