THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Biographical Memoir of M, Da ubbnton. By Baron Cuvieb.* 



J^ouis Jean Marie Daubenton, member of the Senate, and 

 of the Institute of France, professor in the Museum of Natural 

 History and in the College of France, &c. &c., was born at 

 Montbar, in the department of the Cote d'Or, on the 29th May 

 1716. His father, Jean Daubenton, was a notary in that place ; 

 his mother^s name was Marie Fichenot. 



He was distinguished from his childhood by the gentleness of 

 his manners and by his ardour for labour ; and he obtained from 

 the Jesuits of Dijon, with whom he commenced his studies, all 

 those little distinctions which are so flattering to youth, without 

 being always the precursors of more durable success. He che- 

 rished the remembrance of them with pleasure to the end of his 

 life, and always preserved their written testimonials. 



After he had finished, under the Dominicans of the same city, 

 what was then called a course of philosophy, his parents, who 

 intended him for the church, and had made him assume the ec- 

 clesiastical habit after the age of twelve years, sent him to Paris 

 to study theology ; but, perhaps inspired with a presentiment of 

 what he was one day to become, the young Daubenton devoted 

 himself in secret to the study of medicine. He attended, at 

 the schools of the Faculty, the lectures of Baron, Martineng, 

 and Col de Villars, — and in that same ' Jardin des Plantes,' of 



• Read to the Royal Institute of France. 

 APBIL — JITNE 1828. A 



