Eloge of Baron Cuvier. 351 



forded ample resources of this description. He had thus an 

 opportunity of reading nearly all new productions of every 

 kind, and this employment he regarded as of considerable im- 

 portance. He was aware how much light might be thrown on 

 the social condition of a country even by its most frivolous lite- 

 rary productions ; and his instinctive love of knowledge led him 

 to study and understand every thing in the moral as well as the 

 natural order of things. 



I have named the earliest works which procured him dis- 

 tinction in the Natural Sciences. In 1811 he published his Re- 

 cherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles de Quadrupedes. This work 

 has gone through three editions, and the preliminary discourse 

 has been often reprinted. In 1817 appeared his MSmoires pour 

 servir a VHistoire des Mollusqiies^ and the Regne Animal, ar- 

 ranged according to its organization. During the last years of 

 his life he was occupied with a great work on the Natural History 

 of Fishes, in twenty volumes, eight of which have already ap- 

 peared, and mateiials necessary for five others were prepared. 

 Three years since he undertook a course of the History of the 

 Natural Sciences, which he delivered from notes, and which, ac- 

 cording to the testimony of all who heard him, were remarkable 

 for eloquence, precision, and luminous arrangement. He was 

 occupied, besides, with a new edition of his Lectures on Compa- 

 rative Anatomy, and wished to devote the remainder of his life 

 to a great treatise on the same science, for which he had brought 

 together the immense collection of the Jardin du Roi. The 

 greater number of the drawings necessary for this work were 

 already completed, and the most considerable proportion of them 

 were executed by his own hand. 



Will it be said, then, that he has been unfaithful for a single 

 day to the science that had attracted his earliest regard, or will 

 it be thought that he did not allow it sufficiently to occupy his 

 time, and engross his attention ? Whoever desires to form an 

 idea of the extent of the knowledge which he had acquired in 

 its cultivation, let him peruse the three volumes of eloges which 

 I have already mentioned, where will be found an account of 

 nearly all the scientific discoveries of our times. In consequence 

 of the nature and variety of the subjects therein discussed, there 

 is scarcely a department of the natural sciences, the principles of 



