ftlO Death ofCuvier. 



portance of the discoveries, and contributing to the advancement 

 of their author. He was almost immediately chosen a member 

 of the class of sciences of the Institute, and to succeed the old 

 Mertrud, in the chair of Comparative Anatomy in the Garden 

 of Plants at Paris: his lectures were already become remarkable 

 for their eloquence and clearness, and attracted crowds of stu- 

 dents. Cuvier appeared at this period threatened with consump- 

 tion, and he has often said since, that his exercise as a professor 

 gave activity to his lungs, and restored him to health. Named 

 Professor of Natural History to the Central School of the Pan- 

 theon, he threw a lustre over this place by the publication of his 

 Tableau du Regne Animal, which, notwithstanding its elemen- 

 tary appearance, has served as a basis to all subsequent works 

 on zoological classification. 



He published soon after, his Lectures on Comparative Ana- 

 tomy (5 vols. 8vo.), which were afterwards pronounced by 

 the Institute to have merited the great decennial prize for 

 the work which had most advanced the knowledge of natural 

 science. This work, abridged from his lectures, was arranged 

 under his own eyes^ the first two volumes by his friend M. 

 Dumeril, and the last three by his relative M. Duvernoy. At 

 this same time he published a series of memoirs upon the Ana- 

 tomy of the Mollusca. Afterwards he devoted much of his at- 

 * tention to the detailed examination of the fossil debris of the 

 bones of mammifera : he took particular notice of a number of 

 fossils in the environs of Paris, and was assisted in the geological 

 part of his labours by his friend M. Alexander Brongniart. The 

 sagacity and skill which he applied to the determination of these 

 fossil bones, gave rise to a science altogether new, which con- 

 siderably assisted geology, and conferred a more philosophic 

 character upon it. A number of excellent works and memoirs 

 published since by various naturalists, have shewn the prodigious 

 influence which the labours of Cuvier have had on the study of 

 geology, upon that of the animal kingdom, and even upon that 

 of vegetable fossils. M. Cuvier, although he did not publish 

 any great work for a long period, continued to lay before the 

 public his particular researches, which alone would have been 

 sufficient to render any other man illustrious. Such are his beau- 



