APPENDIX. 319 



England. Some were disposed to yield, when Geoffroy 

 indignantly declared that, rather than give up his papers 

 and notes, he would burn them with his own hands at 

 the moment the English entered Alexandria. Carried 

 away by his example, all his colleagues declared their 

 determination to do the same. Nothing could, of course, 

 be attempted in the face of such resolution, and the 

 English plenipotentiary was therefore compelled to draw 

 back, while France secured the glory of publishing the 

 great work on Egypt. 



In 1808 Geoffroy was charged with a scientific mission 

 to Portugal, the object of which was to obtain from the 

 collections in that kingdom all the specimens which were 

 wanting in those of France. Far from abusing his 

 position, Geoffroy carried with him duplicates from the 

 Jardin des Plantes, and limited himself to making ex- 

 changes, which were equally advantageous to both par- 

 ties. The Canons of St. Vincent, surprised at conduct 

 to which they were so little accustomed, wished to make 

 Geoffroy a rich present, but this he refused. His liberal 

 and noble conduct, however, reaped its reward on a fu- 

 ture occasion ; for when foreigners, having in their turn 

 become victors, came to ransack our museums at Paris 

 and to recover all that had been taken from them, the 

 minister of Portugal having been invited to remove from 

 the museum everything that belonged to his own country, 

 replied that he had nothing to claim, for everything had 

 passed in goodwill, and that M. Geoffroy, far from abusing 

 his authority, had not only replaced through duplicates 

 everything that had been given to him, but he moreover 

 classified and labelled the great collection of Ajuda. 

 Thus, owing to the magnanimity of Geoffroy, the Jardin 

 des Plantes was one of the very few establishments of 

 Paris whose collections did not suffer by our disasters in 

 1815. 



