TWO PRINCIPAL WORKS OF ROBINEAU-DESVOIDY 
187 
would even suggest that this publication should be facilitated and accel¬ 
erated by all the means at your disposal. Otherwise, it might happen 
that, not finding a publisher who would incur the expense, the author 
would feel that five or six years of diligent work had been lost for his 
reputation, and, discouraged by such an unfortunate beginning, would 
suspend his entomological labors; a result which, in our estimation, would 
be a real loss for science as well as for the glory of France, the zoology of 
which is still very little advanced (‘ encore si peu avancee ’).” 
This Report, with its genuine appreciation of the merit of a 
young man and a beginner, expressed by masters in science in the 
most considerate and encouraging terms, does, it seems to me, the 
greatest honor to the enlightened spirit which prevailed at that 
time in the Academy of Sciences in Paris. It was about this 
very time that Goethe, in his retraite of Weimar, with marked 
disregard of politics and other questions which absorbed con¬ 
temporaries, used to follow attentively the discussions of Cuvier 
and Geoffroy St. Hilaire on the highest problems of biology. 1 
And this enlightened point of view stands in most striking con¬ 
trast with the short-sightedness of the specialists in dipterology, 
contemporaries of Rob.-Desvoidy, who attempted to ignore him and 
to suppress his work. 
The first chapter of Rob.-Desvoidy’s “ Essai sur les Myodaires ” 
(1830) begins with this characteristic Introduction : — 
“ The Royal Academy of Sciences, in its meeting of October 2, 1826, ac¬ 
cepted for publication my ‘Essai sur les Myodaires du canton de Saint- 
Sauveur, Dept, de l’Yonne.’ In order to render myself worthy of this honor 
I felt bound to revise the whole of my work, to establish it on a broader 
basis (‘ Tassurer sur de plus larges bases ’) and to avail myself of the criti¬ 
cisms of the committee on the Report. I had foreseen, what actually 
happened, that I was working upon a subject that was endless. Xatural- 
1 Many passages in J. P. Eckermann’s “ Gesprache mit Goethe ” refer to 
science and literature in France between 1827-1831, especially in connection with the 
periodical “ Le Globe,” of which Goethe was a constant reader. They are enumerated 
in the alphabetical Index of the latest edition of Eckermann’s work (1885), under the 
vocable “ Globe.” The particular passage about the discussions between Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire and Cuvier will be found in Vol. II, p. 239 (December, 1831), of that edition. 
Mr. Demogeot, in his “ Hist.de la litterature fran^aise,” 10th edit., 1869, p. 621-624, 
gives an account of the importance of “Le Globe ” as the organ of the best intellects 
in France at that time, and adds some very interesting references to the opinions 
expressed by Goethe in his “ Colloquies ” with Eckermann. 
