4 Biographical Memoir of M. Daubentmi. 



tween nature and him, and his eloquence seemed to exercise it- 

 self against his own reason, before employing itself in mislead- 

 ing that of others. 



Daubenton, feeble in his bodily constitution, gentle in his 

 aspect, and possessed of a moderation which he owed to nature 

 as much as to his own wisdom, carried the most scrupulous cir- 

 cumspection into all his researches. He believed and affirmed 

 only what he had seen and touched. Far from wishing to per- 

 suade by any other means than strict evidence, he carefully 

 avoided in his conversation and writings every thing figurative, 

 every expression that might produce deception. Possessed of 

 immovable patience, he never intermitted his exertions ; he went 

 over the same investigation again and again, and by a method, 

 perhaps too rare among the cultivators of real science, all the 

 faculties of his mind seemed to unite in imposing silence upon 

 his imagination. 



Buffbn thought he had only taken a laborious assistant who 

 would level the inequalities of the road, but he found a faithful 

 guide who pointed out to him the false paths and precipices. 

 A hundred times did the biting smile which escaped his friend 

 when he perceived something doubtful, bring him over from his 

 first ideas ; a hundred times did one of those words, which that 

 friend knew so well to apply at the proper time, arrest him in 

 his headlong progress; and the wisdom of the one thus allying 

 itself with the energy of the other, gave to the History of Qua- 

 drupeds, the only one common to the two authors, that degree 

 of perfection which renders it, if not the most interesting of 

 those which enter into the great Natural History of Buffbn, at 

 least that which is the most exempt from error, and which will 

 longest retain a classical character among naturalists. 



It was, therefore, still less by what he did for him, than by 

 what he prevented him from doing, that Daubenton was useful 

 to Buffbn, and that the latter had reason to congratulate himself 

 for having formed such a connection. 



It was about the year 1742 that he took him to Paris. The 

 office of keeper and demonstrator of the Cabinet of Natural 

 History was very imperfectly discharged, and the person who 

 possessed it, a M. Noguez, having long resided in the country, 

 its duties were performed from time to time by some of the 



