In the species figured, the Antennarius Iaevigatus, the skin is smooth, and furnished with short loose processes; the filament on the head is short, and terminated by a small knob of clustered minute filaments; this is succeeded by two other processes, each resembling a fin supported by a single ray, and fringed, especially towards its upper part, by loose portions of skin; to these succeed the back fin, supported, as usual, by many rays.  The colour is pale, irregularly blotched, spotted, and streaked with brown, the markings varying considerably in different individuals; it is also dotted irregularly with white.  By these characters it may be known from the other species of the genus, with which it appears to have been associated by Linnaeus, under the common name of Lophius Histrio.  It was first scientifically distinguished by M. Bosc, a French naturalist, who observed it, on his voyage to America, among the Sargasso weed:  he described and figured it, not without some imperfections, in the Nouveau Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle.  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 du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle.

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[Illustration:  Cuvier]

Cuvier, the great naturalist, paid the debt of nature in May last, after a life devoted to science with an unwearied application and a success exceeded by none in modern times.  He was born at Montbelliard in 1769, a year which gave to so many remarkable men—­a Napoleon—­a Chateaubriand—­a Wellington—­a Humboldt, &c. and his first discoveries were on the Mollusca, and shook to its base the zoological classification which then universally prevailed.

Invited to Paris to fill the place of Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, his lectures speedily drew crowds around him, attracted by his popular eloquence and lucid arrangement.  His next work, Lecons d’Anatomie Comparee, 1805, was rewarded by the Institute with the decennial prize for the work which had contributed the most to our knowledge of the Natural Sciences during that period.  At the same period he published a series of Memoirs on the Anatomy of the Mollusca, and devoted his attention to a detailed examination of the fossil remains of the bones of mammiferous animals; he particularly examined the numerous fossils in the environs of Paris, assisted in the geological part of his task by his friend M. A. Brogniart.  The sagacity and accuracy which M. Cuvier displayed in the examination of fossil bones, raised this branch of inquiry to the dignity of a perfectly new science, which has thrown a powerful light on geology, and directed it into a more philosophical