76 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



he was the legitimate owner of most of the observations 

 made there after him. 



Cuvier, who knew him well and who had watched 

 with interest his declining years, gives us a vivid picture 

 of Desmarest. The illustrious geologist was little fitted 

 to push his way in a society where the most successful art 

 was that of self-advertisement. He took no more pains 

 about his private interest than he did about his rights in 

 regard to scientific discovery, importuning neither the 

 dispensers of fortune nor those of fame. With his crust 

 and his cheese, he said, he needed no Government help to 

 visit the manufactories or the mountains. In short, in 

 studying all the processes of art, all the forces of nature, 

 he had entirely neglected those arts that sway the world, 

 because nothing which agitates the world could move him. 

 Even works of wit and imagination remained unknown 

 to him, because they did not lie within the range of his 

 studies. His friends used jocularly to affirm that he 

 would have broken the most beautiful statue in order to 

 ascertain the nature of an antique stone, and this character 

 was so widely given to him that at Eome the keepers of 

 the museums felt some alarm in admitting him. In 

 society, too, things, whatever they might be, affected him 

 on one side only. For instance, when an Englishman was 

 recounting at the house of the Duchesse d'Anville the 

 then recent thrilling incident in Cook's first voyage, when 

 his vessel, pierced by a point of rock, was only saved from 

 sinking by the stone breaking off and remaining fixed in 

 the hole, every one present expressed in his own way 

 the interest he felt in the story. Desmarest, however, 

 quietly inquired whether the rock was basaltic or calcareous. 



