46 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



teacher, appears to me to be impressed with peculiar 

 beauty. Who could fail to be deeply affected at the 

 last accents of so pure an intelligence, disengaged 

 from the vanities and vexations of systems ? Who 

 could remain cold and insensible before the last look 

 thrown on creation, by him who had revealed &o 

 many of its mysteries ?" After this lecture, the first 

 symptoms of disease appeared ; he felt a slight pain 

 and numbness in his right arm, and his throat be- 

 came affected. Two days after, both his arms were 

 seized, and the power of swallowing was lost. He 

 nevertheless retained all his faculties, and the power 

 of speech ; he arranged his worldly affairs, by com- 

 pleting his will, and sent for M. Royer* to make a 

 note of the sums he had spent from his private funds, 

 in various outlays upon the collections in the garden. 

 These were attested by four witnesses, being him- 

 self too much paralyzed to sign the deeds. He was 



* M. Royer held a situation in the Administration of the 

 Jardin des Plantes. He was a man of great worth, and 

 possessed an excellent disposition, and students or visitants 

 to the Garden will have to lament his decease. When a 

 boy, he spent some years in Britain, and became master of 

 the English language, which he afterwards recollected and 

 spoke so perfectly, as almost to escape detection. Many 

 letters of introduction were carried to him from Scotland, 

 and no one left him without feeling obliged by his atten- 

 tion ; and upon our own first visit to Paris, we carried one 

 from Mr Neill of Edinburgh, and the attention and kind- 

 ness which we received will always be gratefully remem- 

 bered. 



M. Rover published an excellent account of the progress 

 and history of the Jard ties Plantce. 



