332. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



grounding at his hands and gained from him many valuable ideas, 

 which indeed he gratefully acknowledged throughout his life. Having suc- 

 cessfully passed out of the school at the age of eighteen he returned home; 

 he could not afford to work his way up as an unsalaried official in the Civil 

 Service, so he had to accept the post of tutor in a Protestant family in Nor- 

 mandy. Here on the Channel coast he found an entirely new animal world, 

 which he at once began to study with keen interest; in his spare time he 

 dissected all the fishes he came across and compared their structure, and with 

 even greater enthusiasm took up the study of the innumerable lower animal 

 forms that the ebb tide left stranded on the shore — molluscs, worms, and 

 starfish. In Linnasus's Systema Nature, which was the examination text-book 

 of the time, these creatures were not thoroughly dealt with; even Aristotle 

 had at one time displayed greater interest in marine animals, and in his writ- 

 ings Cuvier found not only records of their life, but also ideas suggesting 

 ways of comparing their different structure. He drew everything that he 

 studied, for he had learnt to be a clever draughtsman. Some of these pictures, 

 which were submitted through an aquaintance to Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, 

 then newly-elected professor in Paris, proved of momentous importance for 

 Cuvier's future. He was summoned to Paris and within a short time was 

 appointed professor of comparative anatomy, although he had never dis- 

 sected a human body — an appointment similar to that of GeofFroy and La- 

 marck the year before. Thus his fortune was made and new promotions and 

 honours followed in rapid succession, more than space allows us to enumer- 

 ate. Cuvier stood especially high in Napoleon's favour; contemporary with 

 the Emperor in regard both to the year of his birth and to the period when 

 he first became eminent, he possessed something of the latter's genius for 

 organization; his energy was inexhaustible, he could discharge many duties 

 at the same time without neglecting a single detail, he was full of ideas 

 touching problems of organization, and he also possessed a theoretical 

 knowledge of statecraft which he had acquired during his school period 

 at Stuttgart. Thus he became " insfecteur generaV in the department of edu- 

 cation and carried out his duties in that post, at the same time attending to 

 his professorship and his science, so successfully that under his leadership 

 the educational system in France was thoroughly reformed and a number 

 of new universities founded, both in France and in its extensive subject 

 countries, Italy and Holland. When Napoleon fell, Cuvier became an indis- 

 pensable authority in the spheres of science and education; in spite of the 

 Catholic reaction that succeeded the Bourbon's regime, he, a Protestant, was 

 allowed to retain his appointments and received still further promotions, 

 becoming a baron and minister for Protestant ecclesiastical affairs. Through- 

 out this period he was wise enough to maintain his political independence, 

 and after the July revolution he rose still higher, becoming a peer of France. 



