VIEWS OF GEOPFROYVY ST. HILATRE 202 
the museum, in charge of the department of mammals 
and birds. Hewas the means of securing for Cuvier, 
then of his own age, a position in the museum as 
professor-adjunct of comparative anatomy. [or two 
years (1795 and 1796) the two youthful savants were 
inseparable, sharing the same apartments, the same 
table, the same amusements, the same studies, and 
their scientific papers were prepared in company and 
signed in common. 
Geoffroy became a member of the great scientific 
commission sent to Egypt by Napoleon (1789-1802). 
By his boldness and presence of mind he, with 
Savigny and the botanist Delille, saved the treasures 
which at Alexandria had fallen into the hands of 
the English general in command. In 1808 he was 
charged by Napoleon with the duty of organizing 
public instruction in Portugal. Here again, by his 
address and firmness, he saved the collections and 
exchanges made there from the hands of the Eng- 
lish. When thirty-six years old he was elected a 
member of the Institute. 
In 1818 he began to discuss philosophical anatomy, 
the doctrine of homologies; he also studied the 
embryology of the mammals, and was the founder of 
teratology. It was he who discovered the vestigial 
teeth of the baleen whale and those of embryo birds, 
and the bearing of this on the doctrine of descent 
must have been obvious to him. 
As early as 1795, before Lamarck had changed his 
views as to the stability of species, the young 
Geoffroy, then twenty-three years old, dared to claim 
that species may be only “les diverses dégéucrations 
