(ftit 



THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Death ofCuvier. 



XHK learned of Europe have sustained a great and irrepa- 

 rable loss. George Cuvier expired on the 13th May 1832, 

 after four days of suffering, from an attack of paralysis in the 

 throat, which very soon reached his lungs. He was only sixty- 

 three years of age, being born in the month of ^ February of the 

 year 1767, which has produced so many remarkable men, — Na- 

 poleon, Chateaubriand, Walter Scott. 



His native city, Montbelliard, since reunited to France, was 

 then a principality of Switzerland, and dependent on the Duke 

 of Wurtemberg. His first studies were at the school of Stutt- 

 gardt, and he commenced his career by entering as sub-lieute- 

 nant in the Swiss ^-egiraent of Chateaubriand. The disband- 

 ing of this corps gave him his liberty, and he passed the most 

 troublesome period of the Revolution occupied with his educa- 

 tion, at a country house in Normandy, not far from the sea. It 

 was there, as his first essay, he made those great anatomical dis- 

 coveries on the Mollusca, which occasioned a total change in the 

 zoological classification which had been unanimously admitted 

 since the time of Aristotle. This work, published in 1795, 

 fixed upon him the attention of all the learned in Europe. M. 

 Geoffroy St Hilaire had the honour of first perceiving the ipn- 

 VOL. XIV. NO. XXVIII. APRIL 1833. o 



