MEMOIR OF HAUY. 



READ BEFORE THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BY BARON CUVIER, PERPETUAL 



SECRETARY. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BY C. A. ALEXANDER. 



Iii the history of science, epochs occur when the human mind seems 

 to take a surprising stride. When years have been spent in the patient 

 accumulation of facts and observations, and the received theories no 

 longer suffice to harmonize them, ideas respecting natural phenomena 

 become in some measure incoherent and contradictory. System is no 

 longer possible, and the need is universally felt of some new bond of 

 connection. Should a genius appear at such a juncture, capable of 

 rising to a point of view from which some of the required relations 

 may be embraced, fresh courage is diffused among cotemporary in- 

 quirers, each throws himself with ardor into the new paths which have 

 been opened, and discoveries succeed one another with increasing 

 rapidity. Those who have successfully associated their names with 

 the movement assume, in the eyes of their followers of a later genera- 

 tion, the proportions of some superior race; and, as they pass succes- 

 sively from the stage of life, are deplored as heroes whom the world 

 must despair of ever seeing equaled. 



Such an epoch the close of the eighteenth century unquestionably 

 was, as regards the natural sciences. 



The laws of a geometry, as concise as comprehensive, extended over 

 the entire heavens ; the boundaries of the universe enlarged and its 

 spaces peopled with unknown stars ; the course of celestial bodies de- 

 termined more rigorously than ever, both in time and space; the 

 earth weighed as in a balance; man soaring to the clouds or traversing 

 the seas without the aid of winds ; the intricate mysteries of chemistry 

 referred to certain clear and simple facts; the list of natural exist- 

 encies increased ten-fold in every species, and their relations irrevocabry 

 fixed by a survey as well of their internal as external structure ; the 

 history of the earth, even in ages the most remote, explored by means 

 of its own monuments, and shown to be not less wonderful in fact 

 than it might have appeared to the wildest fancy : such is the grand 

 and unparalleled spectacle which it has been our privilege to contem- 

 plate, but which renders only more bitter the disappearance of those 

 great men to whom we owe it. Few are the years which have seen 

 the tomb close upon a Lavoisier, a Priestley, a Cavendish, a Camper, 



