4 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the prison of Saint-Firmin, near Geoffroy's residence ; and he, on 

 the 2d of September, getting access to the prison under a disguise, 

 signified to them that he intended to help them escape. " No," said 

 the Abbe de Keranran, "we will not leave our brethren, for that 

 would only make their destruction more certain." Geoffroy, however, 

 got a ladder, and took it after nightfall to the corner of the prison- 

 wall which he had designated, and waited for eight hours before the 

 first priest appeared. One of the prisoners hurt his foot in jumping, 

 and our hero carried him in his arms to a neighboring yard. Twelve 

 of the priests had been rescued, when one of the guards fired a gun, 

 the shot from which went through Geoffroy's clothes, and aroused him 

 to the fact, which he had not noticed, that the sun had risen. He 

 then returned home ; but, though he had arranged to meet the priests 

 afterward, he was not destined to see them again ; and, when he went 

 to the appointed rendezvous, he found himself alone. Exhausted by his 

 efforts, Geoffroy hurried home to Etampes, where he fell dangerously 

 ill, but was brought back to health under the salubrious influence of the 

 fresh country air. Haiiy's letters to him at this time attest the affec- 

 tion which existed between the master and his pupil. In one of them 

 the great mineralogist wrote (October 6, 1792) : " Your letter reached 

 me just as I was going out to dinner ; it was like a delicate dessert, 

 of which I immediately gave a part to M. Lhomond ; we were never 

 so happy at the table except when you were really with us " and 

 then he advises Geoffroy to suspend for a while, for the sake of the 

 restoration of his health, the hard study of crystallography, and attach 

 himself to plants, " which present themselves under a more graceful 

 mien and speak a more intelligible language. A course in botany is 

 all pure hygiene." Geoffroy resumed his studies in Paris in Novem- 

 ber, and in March following, at the request of Daubenton and on the 

 nomination of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, he was appointed sub-keeper 

 and assistant demonstrator in the Natural History cabinet of the Jar- 

 din des Plantes. On the reorganization of the Jardin des Plantes as 

 the Museum of Natural History, in June, 1793, he was named to the 

 chair of Zoology of Vertebrated Animals. He hesitated to accept 

 the position because his studies had been in mineralogy, but Daubenton 

 persuaded him to do so. Immediately after his installation, he began 

 the foundation of the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes, beginning 

 with three itinerant collections of animals that had been confiscated 

 by the police and taken to the museum. Of what he accomplished in 

 this department he has written : " When I began to direct my studies 

 to the natural history of animals, that science had not been encouraged 

 at Paris. It had never been made a branch of instruction, and I did 

 not expect that I should shortly be made the first one to treat it in a 

 public course. Established in the year II (1793-94) as Professor of the 

 Natural History of Mammalia and Birds, I became also an administrator 

 in the museums of the collections of these classes. There were then 



