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182 MEMOIR OF DUCROTAY DE BLAINVILLE 



Passing his life in a sombre apartment, buried in the depths of a vast arm- 

 chair, encompassed with a triple rampart of heaps of books, original drawings, 

 anatomical preparations and disordered instruments, if sometimes a studious dis- 

 ciple obtained admittance to him, it was necessary to surmount more than one 

 obstacle, and not less difficult to find a chair than a place for it when found. If at 

 length, after this difficult installation, reference to some volume became necessary 

 in the heat of research, it must be drawn generally from the base of a mountain 

 of books, whose displacement was not the less chaotic and tumultuous for being 

 often repeated. Did an adventurous visitor, after much solicitation, obtain ac- 

 cess to the inviolable asylum, when as yet he was scarcely more than on the 

 threshold, and without a sense of Iris presence being manifested by any move- 

 ment, a grave and sonorous voice would address to him the invariable question : 

 WJiaf is needed for your service, Monsieur ? The stranger, sometimes, discon- 

 certed by the apparently inextricable confusion of the labyrinth before him, or aware 

 too late of the inconvenience imposed on a profound thinker by the derangement 

 of his ideas, would seek safety in a hasty retreat. But if the first expressions 

 of the visitor disclosed a personage worthy of a learned conference, M. de Blain- 

 ville, at once raising his head and divesting himself of the thoughts in which he 

 was absorbed, would employ all the advantages which his facile elocution placed 

 at the service of a vast fund of knowledge, and the auditor, charmed by so 

 much courtesy, might expose himself, by prolonging his visit, to the danger 

 that after his departure the laborious savant should once more repeat the phrase : 

 Another hour lost. Was it a former pupil, on the other hand, who came to clear 

 up some questionable point, he might with confidence surmount every barrier 

 and count on the most cordial reception ; for, if M. de Blainville exacted from 

 his disciples a species of feudal Jjdelity and homage, he at least requited it by 

 an affection which was little less than paternal. 



It was from this sanctuary of study that, after having been long held in re- 

 serve, there issued one day, in full panoply, like Minerva from the brain of 

 Jupiter, the emphatic contradiction of all the arguments on which Cuvier had 

 founded the new science oi paleontology. 



The first germ of this surprising science of lost existences rested on the old 

 belief of a general and ancient deluge. In vain did the scholastic philosophy 

 pretend that fossil shells were only sports of nature; in vain did the philosopher 

 Voltaire, who, for very unphilosophic reasons, would not admit, on any terms, 

 that there had been a deluge, send forth his pilgrims to seek for an explanation 

 of the dispersion of marine shells : neither sjwrH of nature nor pilgrims availed 

 anything. Sustained by the evidence of the fact and by ineffaceable tradition, 

 the common sense of mankind asserted its right of dissent. 



In the seventeenth century, attention, which had been excited by iho. fossil 

 shells, was transferred to the gigantic bones preserved in the bowels of the earth, 

 and whose origin was not involved in less obscurity. In 1696 some bones of the 

 elephant were discovered in the principality of Gotha. The Grand Duke called 

 together his council of savants, and the council pronounced, with unanimity, 

 that these were sjxjrts of nature. About the same time were found in the prov- 

 ince of Dauphiny some bones of the animal which we now call the mastodon. 

 A surgeon of the country buys these bones and has them brought to Paris, 

 where he exhibits them for money, affirming in his advertisement that they 

 were taken from a sepulchre thirty feet long, and that they are the remains of a 

 giant, a king of one of the tribes of barbarians who were defeated near the 

 Khone by Marius. All Paris was eager to see this trophy of the glory of 

 Marius; and, agreeably to its almost constant usage, Paris, after having at first 

 believed all that M^as told it, presently made a mock of all that it had at first 

 believed. 



With the eighteenth century comes at last a serious study of the subject. 

 Gmcliu and Pallas bring to our knowledge the fossil bones of Siberia; they inform 



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