OOXGEXIAL EMPLOYMENT. 107 



low-citizens, and the influence of his friends, were 

 sufficient to protect him. At a later period he 

 went to reside permanently at Paris, where he was 

 employed in the congenial task of arranging the 

 insects in the Museum of Natural History. His 

 zeal and talent soon rendered him the successful 

 competitor and superior of those whom he called 

 his masters. His slender emoluments sufficed to 

 supply his modest wants ; and he procured what 

 was necessary to extend the limits of the science 

 to which his labours were devoted by writing 

 for the booksellers various works on the different 

 branches of natural history, and also on general 

 science. All his writings displayed intelligence 

 and varied information ; but those treating of 

 entomology always evinced his rapid progress in 

 this science, until at last his great work, the 

 Genera Crustaceorum and Insectorum placed him 

 in the first rank of the entomologists of Europe. 

 In this he first mentioned his little insect de- 

 liverer. Under the genus Necrobia he gives, as 

 an illustration, the species called Necrobia rufi- 

 collis; and at the end of its descriptive mark 

 adds, " an insect very dear to me, for, in those 

 disastrous times when France groaned tremulously 

 under the weight of endless calamities, by the kind 

 intervention of Bory de St Vincent and D'Argelas, 

 but principally the latter, this little animal was the 



