M. Frederic Cuvier. 11 



new species might readily be added to the domestic races we 

 now possess ; and more especially the Hottentot Dauw and 

 the Dzigguetai among the Solipedes, the Tapir among the 

 Pachydermata, and the Lama Vigogne among the Ruminants. 

 I only throw out these hints to men so enlightened as those I 

 now address, who are alive to the public welfare, who feel 

 that agriculture has been too much neglected among us, and 

 who are beginning to perceive that one of our most urgent 

 agricultural wants, if not the first of all, is to have stronger 

 and more varied domestic races amongst us. 



M. F. Cuvier had been appointed in the year 1810 to the 

 office of Inspector of the Academy of Paris, and in 1831 he 

 became Inspector-General of the University. In the dis- 

 cbarge of this office he carried along with him the same in- 

 tegrity of an honourable man, the same comprehensive views, 

 and the same habits of practical reflection, of which he has 

 left an admirable proof in his elegant work concerning " The 

 Teaching of Natural History in our Colleges' 11 — L' Enseignement 

 de PHistoire Naturelle dans nos Colleges. 



Rollin, that able man who had meditated so much upon 

 the instruction of youth, and whose memory cannot be too 

 fondly cherished, proposed, as early as the commencement of 

 the last century, to introduce Natural History into the curri- 

 culum of our colleges. He wished to engage children in the 

 study of those phenomena " about which,' 1 he remarked, " their 

 astonishment will be excited in the same proportion as their 

 understandings are enlightened." Soon after the work of 

 Pluche appeared. This was the first fruit of Rolling thoughts, 

 and perhaps the only result ; for, before we can see natural 

 history pervade public instruction, at least in a way that will 

 be at all general, central schools must first be established. 

 At present, however, tbe natural history which is introduced 

 into our schools, is natural history with whatsoever it con- 

 tains of the great and the difficult ; it is natural history with 

 its learned nomenclatures, and its abstract methodical clas- 

 sifications. But, as M. F. Cuvier has well remarked, first 

 of all, our present colleges, even in their highest classes, 

 do not at all correspond to the central schools, and then, 

 this teaching according to the scientific method, which is 



