140 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



nently useful, since it not only enables a man to 

 preserve observations of fugitive appearances, but 

 sharpens his faculty of observation by the exercise 

 it gives. Cuvier's facile pencil was always em- 

 ployed: if he had nothing to draw for his own 

 memoirs or those of his colleagues, he amused him- 

 self with drawing insects as presents to the young 

 ladies of his acquaintance an entomologist's gal- 

 lantry, which never became more sentimental. 



In 1788, that is, in his nineteenth year, Cuvier 

 quitted Stuttgardt, and became tutor in a noble- 

 man's family in Normandy, where he remained till 

 1795, when he was discovered by the Abbe Tessier, 

 who wrote to Parmentier, " I have just found a 

 pearl in the dunghill of Normandy :" to Jussieu he 

 wrote, "Eemember it was I who gave Delambre to 

 the academy ; in another department this also will 

 be a Delambre." Geoffroy St. Hilaire, already pro- 

 fessor at the Jardin des Plantes, though younger 

 than Cuvier, was shown some of Cuvier's manu- 

 scripts, which filled him with such enthusiasm that 

 he wrote to him, " Come and fill the place of Lin- 

 naeus here ; come and be another legislator of nat- 

 ural history." Cuvier came, and Geoffroy stood 

 aside to let his great rival be seen. 



Goethe, as I have elsewhere remarked, has no- 

 ticed the curious coincidence of the three great zo- 

 ologists successively opening to their rivals the path 

 to distinction : Buffon called Daubenton to aid him ; 

 Daubenton called Geoffroy; and Geoffroy called 



