SKETCH OF PAUL GERVAIS. 551 



an early period of his investigations to animals which had been some- 

 what neglected by naturalists, and the fruit of his studies among them 

 appeared in his work upon "Myriapods and Fresh-Water Polypi." 

 In this work he defined accurately for the first time the characteristics 

 of the animals, and followed out some of the changes which are gone 

 through by certain of the species at various ages. In 1835 M. Gervais 

 was admitted as preparator into the laboratory of comparative anat- 

 omy of the Museum of Natural History, and a special direction was 

 given to his studies. Professor de Blainville was preparing a grand 

 work on the bony frame of living and fossil mammals; and the young 

 naturalist, exerting his whole effort in assisting his master, attached 

 himself with marked preference to researches on extinct species, of 

 which he had the satisfaction of describing definitely not a few that 

 had been hitherto unobserved or inadequately studied. 



In 1841, according to Larousse's " Dictionnaire Universelle," after 

 having spent ten years in the Museum, according to M. Blanchard, M. 

 Gervais was called to the chair of Zoology in the Faculty of Sciences 

 at Montpellier, where he successfully continued his researches; and here 

 he prepared and published his great book on the living and fossil ver- 

 tebrates of France (" Zoologie et Paleontologie Francaises," 1841-52), 

 which was regarded as in continuation of Cuvier's and Blainville's 

 publications on the same subject. He became Dean of the I^aculty in 

 1856 ; was chosen correspondent of the Institute ; and, on the death 

 of Gratiolet, in 1865, became his successor as Professor of Anatomy, 

 Comparative Physiology, and Geology, in the Sorbonne. In 1868 he 

 became Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Museum of Natural 

 History, " returning as master to the laboratory in which his early 

 youth had been spent." In the collections of this institution he found 

 subjects of a most interesting character which were still awaiting an 

 historian ; and applying himself to the tasks thus pointed out to him, 

 he engaged in those researches which resulted in the publication of his 

 excellent work on the fossil mammalia of South America. The re- 

 mains of aquatic mammalia that lived in the ancient seas having been 

 exhumed in enormous quantities, M. Blanchard continues, a general 

 study of the Cetacece seemed to impose itself upon him as indispen- 

 sable to the progress of an essential part of zoology. M. Gervais un- 

 dertook this long and difficult study in co-operation with his friend 

 Professor Van Beneden, of the University of Louvain, and after sev- 

 eral years the fruit of their conjoint studies appeared as the " Oste- 

 ography of Living and Fossil Cetaceans " (" Osteographie des Cetaces 

 Vivants et Fossils "). 



M. Stanislas Meunier has given, in " La Nature," careful accounts 

 of M. Gervais's principal writings, with estimates of their scope and 

 value. The " Documents pour servir a la Monographic des Chirop- 

 teres Sud-Americains " (" Documents in aid of the Monography of the 

 South-American Chiroptera? ") included descriptions of many species 



