1 6 Baron Cuvier's Historical Ehge of Baron Ramond. 



Stael) who was soon compelled to quit Paris. It was wished 

 also to remove him, but a vice-president of the legislative 

 body could not be treated like a foreign lady. The plan was 

 delayed till his time was finished, and in 1806, he was ap- 

 pointed to the prefecture of the Puy de Dome, in terms which 

 left him no choice, and hence he was in the habit of saying 

 that he was a prefect by Lettre de Cachet. 



It was perhaps to this circumstance as much as to his good 

 sense that he owed the merit, then very rare, and which his fel- 

 low magistrates largely appreciated, — that of not administer- 

 ing his office to excess. We know that in his department they 

 still retain an honourable recollection of the tranquillity which 

 individuals enjoyed at a time when so many pretexts were found 

 for vexatious scrutinies. Besides, he was far from neglecting 

 that which really interested the public, and he has left a fine 

 monument of his administration in the hydraulic works of 

 Mont-d'Or, one of the most useful and best frequented of our 

 bathing-places. 



But in point of duration, what are the acts of the wisest ad- 

 ministration compared with the least service rendered to the 

 sciences ? What M. Ramond did for them in the Puy de 

 Dome, will certainly be that of which the world will preserve 

 the longest recollection. Whether by a fortunate accident, 

 or by an express intention, such as frequently entered into the 

 views of him by whom he was appointed, he found himself at 

 the head of a country the most classical in geology, of that 

 Auvergne where craters of all ages, — currents of lava in all di- 

 rections, — basalts of all forms, unfold to the naturalist in the 

 clearest language, the history of volcanos, and its epochs 

 during hundreds of centuries anterior to all human history. 

 He found himself especially in those very places where Pascal 

 had made the admirable discovery of the mensuration of heights 

 by the barometer. * The ideas which he had entertained from 

 his first excursions in the Pyrenees, and the necessity of this 

 instrument for geology, and on the improvements of which its 

 use was susceptible, awakened in him with new strength. 



• It is well known that Pascal, after his first experiment made on the 

 steeple of St Jaques-du-haut-Pas, at Paris, engaged his brother-in-law, 

 Perrier, who lived at Clermont, to repeat the experiment on the mountain 

 of the Puy de Dome. 



