f) Bftigraph ica I Memoir of M. Da ubeuton. 



to labour a long time before they could even complete an isolat- 

 ed branch. Some amateurs collected series, which satisfied their 

 tastes ; but they commonly confined themselves to the most fu- 

 tile objects, such as were more adapted to please the sight, than 

 to enlighten the mind. The most brilliant shells, the most va- 

 riegated agates, the largest and most sparkling gems, generally 

 formed the bases of their collections. 



Daubenton, supported by BufTon, and profiting by the re- 

 sources which the influence of his friend obtained for him from 

 the government, conceived and executed a more extensive plan : 

 he thought that none of the productions of Nature ought to be 

 kept back from her temple; he perceived that such of these 

 productions as we look upon as the most important, can only be 

 well known, in so far as they are compared with all the others ; 

 that there is not even one of them which, by its numerous rela- 

 tions, is not more or less directly connected with the rest of na- 

 ture. He therefore excluded none, and made the greatest efforts 

 to collect all. In particular, he made an extensive collection of 

 anatomical preparations, which long distinguished the Parisian 

 Cabinet, and which, although less agreeable to the vulgar eye, 

 ai*e of the greatest utility to the man who does not confine his 

 inquiries merely to the surface of created beings, and who strives 

 to render natural history a philosophical science, by making it 

 also explain the phenomena which it describes. 



The study and arrangement of these treasures became to him 

 a true passion, the only one perhaps that he had ever been re- 

 marked to possess. He shut himself up for whole days in the 

 Cabinet. He there turned over in a thousand ways the objects 

 which he had brought together, scrupulously examined all their 

 parts, tried all the arrangements imaginable, until he fell upon 

 that which neither offended the eye, nor broke asunder natural 

 relations. n jmiJii 



This taste for the arrangement of a cabiiifet' revived with 

 energy in his last years, when our victories brought a new mass 

 of riches to the Cabinet of Natural History, and circumstances 

 permitted the whole to assume a greater development. At the 

 age of eighty-four, with his head bent upon his breast, his feet 

 and hands deformed by the gout, unable to walk without the 

 support of two persons, he was led every morning to the Cabi- 



