216 Biographical Memoir of Charles Bonnet. 



mation of the clouds, penetrate into their interior, or raise him- 

 self above them. 



But I perceive that, in thus painting the theatre in which 

 the distinguished individuals lived of whom I am about to 

 speak, I have unintentionally presented you with a miniature of 

 their discoveries; and, in fact, their country is in a manner 

 vividly impressed upon their works, even those which are the 

 most comprehensive in their object : nor was it ever left by one 

 of them, — and if the other sometimes separated himself from it, 

 it was always to him the centre and point of comparison to 

 which he referred all that he saw elsewhere ; — powerful influence 

 of first habits,— of which another of their fellow-citizens has 

 given a different kind of example, which the events that have 

 agitated Europe have rendered too memorable. 



Charles Bonnet was born in 1720, of a rich family, distin- 

 guished for the important offices which it had filled. He was 

 intended for the law, and received the education necessary for 

 preparing him to practise that profession. A facility of concep- 

 tion, and a happy imagination, enabled him to make rapid pro- 

 gress in literature and science ; but they did not at first permit 

 him to devote himself with delight to the more abstract medita- 

 tions of philosophy, and still less to the study of all those forms, 

 all those little particular decisions, with which so many codes are 

 filled. 



This taste for agreeable ideas, for easy, although ingenious, 

 researches, already indicated a disposition favourable to the 

 study of Natural History ; and accident threw him entirely into 

 that pursuit. He read one day, in the Spectacle de la Nature, 

 the history of the singular industry of the insect called the Lion 

 Spider, Formica Leo. Vividly impressed with facts equally 

 curious and new to him, he was not satisfied until he had pro- 

 cured one of them ; and, in searching for this insect, he found 

 many others which appeared to him not less interesting. He 

 spoke to every body of the new world which had opened itself 

 up to him. Being apprised of the existence of Reaumur's work, 

 he obtained it, after much importunity, from the public libra- 

 rian, who was at first unwilling to trust it to so young a man. 

 He devoured its contents in a few days, and ran about every- 

 where in search of the animals with whose history Reaumur had 



