THE SCIENTIHC LABORS OF EDWARD LARTETJ 



By Dr. P. Fischer. 



The Geological Society ot France has always paid due respect to the 

 memory of the men who have taken an active part in its transactions 

 and whose scientific reiratation ought in justice to be per[)etuated. 

 M. Gervais, president of the society, has already expressed the uni- 

 versal regret caused among us by the death of M. Lartet, and one of 

 his pupils may now be allowed to review the labors of the estimable mau 

 whose loss we deplore. 



Edouard Amand Isidore Hippolyte Lartet was born on the loth of 

 April, 1801, in the department of Gers, at Saint Guirand, near Castelnau- 

 Barbarens. He was descended from a family which had settled in the 

 country at a very early date. He was the youngest of five brothers, 

 with whom he was sent, for education, to the Lyceum at Auch, and he 

 was one of the three pupils who received the medals awarded to that 

 establishment by the first Napoleon. His predilections were for history 

 and archajology rather than the judicial sciences, but, in deference to 

 the wishes of his fiither, after leaving the college of Audi he entered 

 the law-school of Toulouse, where he graduated iu 1820. By a singular 

 coincidence, Cuvier. then counselor of state, signed, instead of the min- 

 ister of public instruction, the diploma of a youth afterward to be 

 distinguished iu the path which this eminent scientist had opened to 

 paleontology. 



In order to perfect him in the practice as well as the theory of his 

 profession, he was now sent to Paris, in company with an elder brother. 

 Here, while fultilling the duties imposed upon him with that fidelity 

 which characterized him throughout life, he found time for his favorite 

 studies. After he had mastered the rudiments of these sciences, he 

 continued to pursue them, and as his store of books was not large he 

 sold those he had read in order to obtain others. When he returned to 

 Gers he was not only prepared for the practice of the law but for the 

 especial researches which afterward rendered his name illustrious. 



M. Lartet, after completing his law education at Paris, settled in Gers. 

 The practice of his profession was, however, confined to giving advice to 

 the peasants, which was the more highly appreciated because gratuitous. 

 Frequent emanations of this kind from the kindness of his heart consti- 

 tuted a prominent trait of his character. Impelled by gratitude his 

 clients frequently brought him medals of Gallo-Eomanic antiquity which 



*A trauwUitiou for the Smilhsouian lustitution of "Notesnrla vie et los tiavaiix 

 (.r£d. Lavtct, par M. le docteur Fischer, Iu a. hi s6auce gdu^rale aminelle dc la Societe 

 geologiqne de France," from " Vie et travaux d'fidouard Lartet: notices et disconrs 

 publies a roccasion des a mort," ijp. 39-55. 



