26 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



and Millin de Grand Maison ; by them he was in- 

 vited to Paris, and in 1 795 he obeyed the invitation. 

 M. Cuvier was now in Paris, where his ambition 

 and insatiable love for research had often, in imagi- 

 nation, placed him ; he had long desired to be in that 

 capital, to which all Europe was already crowding, 

 from the reputation of her schools, and where that 

 of Natural History had been raised by the efforts of 

 Buffon and Daubenton. Surrounded here by the 

 savans of Paris, to whom he was well known by his 

 Memoirs on the Mollusca, who treated him with 

 kindness and without jealousy, and who even now 

 looked up with deference to his talents, he did not 

 remain long inactive ; and, by the interest of the pro- 

 fessors of the Jardin des Plantes, he was, soon after 

 his arrival, appointed a member of the " Commission 

 des Arts," and a professor in the Central School of 

 the Pantheon. It was for the use of the latter that 

 he composed his Tableau elementaire de 1'Histoire 

 Naturelle des Animaux. 



In the same year, a new chair of Comparative 

 Anatomy was created in the Jardin des Plantes. M. 

 Mertrud was appointed to fill it ; but being aged and 

 infirm, and hardly able to perform the duties, he was 

 induced, at the request of his colleagues, to receive 

 M. Cuvier as an assistant. Thus, in a few months 

 after his leaving Normandy, Cuvier saw one of his 

 most ardent desires fulfilled, and reaped some of the 

 fruits of his previous studies. He was settled in the 

 Garden of Plants, surrounded by all the riches of 



