208 51EMOIR OF DAUBENTOff. 



existed. He had the pleasure of verifying this conjec- 

 ture, when, thirty years after, the Museum obtained 

 the skeleton of the giraffe which is now preserved 

 there. 



Before his time, very vague ideas prevailed on the 

 differences between Man and the Orang-outang. Some 

 regarded the latter as a wild man ; others alleged that 

 it was man degenerated, and that it is his nature to go 

 on four feet. Daubenton proved, by an ingenuous and 

 decisive observation on the articulation of the head, 

 that Man could never walk otherwise than on two feet, 

 nor the Orang-outang otherwise than on four. 



In vegetable physiology, he was the first who called 

 attention to the fact, that all trees do not increase by 

 exterior and concentric layers. The trunk of a palm, 

 which he examined, showed none of these layers ; 

 roused by this observation, he perceived, that the in- 

 crease of this tree takes place by the prolongation of 

 the fibres from the centre, which develop themselves in 

 leaves. He explained by this, why the trunk of a palm 

 does not grow thicker as it increases in age, and why it 

 is of the same size throughout its whole length ; but he 

 did not push his researches further, M. Desfontaines, 

 who had observed the same thing a long while before, 

 has exhausted this matter, so to speak, by proving, that 

 these two modes of growth distinguish trees whose seeds 

 have two cotyledons, and such as have only one ; and 

 establishing on this important discovery a fundamental 

 division in Botany. 



