Deaths. 405 
inventor has promifed to enable us to lay the plan of the ap- 
paratus, with fome of the moft interefting of thofe experi- 
ments which have yet been made with it, oe our readers 
in a future number. 
DEATHS. 
On the 1gth of December, C.Montucla, author of an ex- 
cellent hiftory of the mathematics. Two volumes only of 
the new edition of this work were publifhed before the au- 
thor’s death, but fortunately all his corrections for the re. 
mainder were finifhed. ane 
At Paris, on the 1f of January, the celebrated naturalift 
Daubenton; the friend’ and fellow-labourer of Buffon. He 
was born at Montbard-in Burgundy in the month of May 
1716. He fiudied medicine, and intended to follow that 
profeffion in. his own country; but Buffon, being appointed 
intendant of the king’s garden in 1735, prapofed to Dau- 
benton to refide with him, to apply to natural hiftory, and 
to affift him in the grand Jabours which he was then about 
to undertake. In 1740 the fate and tafte of Daubenton were 
determined for his whole life. More than half a century de- 
voted to the formation of the cabinet of natural hiftory, which 
in 1750 was only a plain drug-fhop belonging to Geoffroy, 
which he arranged methodically and dartehied with produc- 
tions of every kind, has given him a diftinguifhed rank 
among naturalifts. Being pie ae into the “Keadetny of 
Sciences in 1744, he never ceafed to enrich the collection of 
its memoirs with various papers for nearly fifty years. The 
greater part of them contain new facts and ideas refpe&ting 
the clafijfication of fhells, on the hippopotamus, the fhrew-~ 
moufe, bats, foffil bones and teeth, the fituation of the 
great occipital foramen in man and animals, rumination 
and the temperament of {heep, a defcription of feveral kinds 
of new animals, or animals little known. He was interred 
with great pomp on the 3d of January in the garden of plants, 
His funeral was attended by more than 500 perfons, and two 
orations were pronounced on the occafion by C, Lacepede 
and C. Fourcroy. 
LLL LLL 
3 F 3 INDEX 
