CUVIER 19 



birds and quadrupeds. His scientific studies were 

 encouraged by one of the professors of the Academy 

 giving him a copy of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae. At this 

 time he was studying philosophy and political economy, 

 natural history, and the German language. 



During a period of great anxiety and unrest (namely, 

 in 1788), and at the age of nineteen, Cuvier became 

 private tutor in the family of the Comte d'Hricy, whose 

 estate was near Caen in Normandy. In this position he 

 remained for six years all through the Great Revolution ; 

 in the last year of his tutorship he heard of the 

 execution of Lavoisier (1794), and during the same year 

 his country was at war. The French conquered Flanders, 

 overran the Palatinate, and took Treves ; they also took 

 Coblenz, Maastricht, and Venlo, and nearly the whole 

 frontiers of Holland, and many places in Spain. At the 

 same time the French were defeated by the English in 

 various sea-fights, and lost nearly all their West Indian 

 islands. During this period of storm and unrest Cuvier 

 was working quietly on his favourite subject. In the 

 nobleman's family, besides learning the manners and 

 etiquette of refined society, he was studying with great 

 zeal natural history, comparing fossil forms with living 

 species, dissecting molluscs, classifying animals, etc. It 

 was at this period that he conceived the idea of his 

 two great works, the Ossemens Fossiles and the R&gne 

 Animal and he placed classification on an anatomical 



