ii Early Career of Desmarest 49 



The parish priest urged his guardian to have him educated 

 as far as the slender means left for his sustenance would 

 allow. He was accordingly sent to the college of the 

 Oratorians of Troyes; but the pittance available for his 

 benefit was exhausted by the first few terms of his stay 

 there. He had, however, made such marked progress that 

 his teachers, interested in his career, were glad to continue 

 gratuitously the instruction for which he could no longer 

 pay. At the end of his time with them, they passed him 

 on to their brethren in Paris. 



Having made some advance, especially in geometry and 

 physics, he was able to support himself by private teach- 

 ing and other labours which, however, barely provided the 

 necessaries of life. After some ten years of this drudgery, 

 the studies which had been his occupation and solace, came 

 at last to be the means of opening up a new and noble 

 career to him. 



The appearance of Buffon's Theory of the Earth, in 1749, 

 had had a powerful influence in France in directing atten- 

 tion to the revolutions through which our globe has passed. 

 Among the results of this influence, a society which had 

 been founded at Amiens by the Due de Chaulnes, proposed 

 in 1753 a prize for an essay on the question whether 

 England and France had ever been joined together. The 

 subject caught Desmarest's fancy, he made some investiga- 

 tions, sent in an essay and carried off the prize. 



Cuvier, in his Eloge, remarks on the strong contrast 

 between the way in which Desmarest approached his task 

 and that in which Buffon, who had aroused public attention 

 to these subjects, was accustomed to deal with them. The 

 young aspirant to fame, then twenty-eight years of age, 



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