Cuvier 211 



Coupe, but without sufficiently detailed observations to 

 convince his contemporaries that the work was wholly 

 reliable. 1 



It was not until the year 1808 that the Tertiary strati- 

 graphy of the basin of the Seine was worked out in some 

 detail, and that a foundation was thereby furnished for the 

 establishment of a general system of stratigraphical geology 

 in France. The task was accomplished by two men who 

 have left their mark upon the history of the science, 

 Cuvier and Brongniart. 



Georges Chretien Leopold Dagobert Cuvier (1769-1832) 

 came of an old Protestant family in the Jura which in the 

 sixteenth century had fled from persecution and settled at 

 Montbeliard, then the chief town of a little principality 

 belonging to the Duke of Wiirtemberg. He was born at 

 that place on 23rd August 1769, and after a singularly 

 brilliant career at school and at the Caroline Academy of 

 Stuttgart, became tutor in a Normandy family living 

 near Fecamp. He had been drawn into the study of 

 natural history, when a mere child, by looking over the 

 pages of Bufifon, and had with much ardour taken to the 

 observation of insects and plants. In Normandy, the 

 treasures of the sea were opened to him. Gradually his 

 dissections and descriptions, though not published, came to 

 the notice of some of the leading naturalists of France, and 

 he was eventually induced to come to Paris, where, after 

 filling various appointments, he was elected to the chair of 

 Comparative Anatomy in 1795. 



Cuvier's splendid career belongs mainly to the history 

 of biology. We are only concerned here in noting how he 



1 Jowrn. de Physique, tome lix. (1804), pp. 161-176. 



