BONNET AND HALLER 403 



exposed him to the gibes of his playfellows. Removed conse- 

 quently from school, he underwent a course of private tuition, and 

 was then sent to the Academy at Geneva. But his inclination 

 did not lie in the direction of literature. ' Nature,' he writes, 

 ' did not intend me for a man of letters. I was born to be an 

 observer.' At the age of sixteen a work on natural history of 

 some reputation and influence at that time, the Spectacle de la 

 Nature (1732, nine volumes) of the Abbe Pluche fell into his hands. 

 It revealed to him his proper pursuit, the minute observation of 

 the lower forms of life. He succeeded with some difficulty in 

 inducing one of his teachers to lend him Reaumur's work on 

 Insects. His next step was to capture some caterpillars and to 

 send the observations he had made on them to that eminent man 

 of science. To the boy's intense joy, his bold step was rewarded 

 by a highly complimentary letter. Bonnet's vocation was sealed. 

 But he had first to obtain degrees in Law and Philosophy. He 

 would seem also to have studied the Classics to some purpose, 

 for the page in his reminiscences in which he describes this ordeal 

 of university examinations is a specimen of an unhappy passion 

 for classical allusions which pursued him through life. Law after 

 Philosophy, he says, is Tartarus after Elysium ; Roman Law is 

 the hydra of the Lernean march, and he no Hercules. 



Once free from legal toils, Bonnet returned to his researches in 

 Natural History. In these he had an ultimate and philosophical 

 aim, the investigation of the origin of life and of the connection 

 between mind and matter. But the inquiry into these deep 

 subjects began with an attack on a minute question left unsolved 

 by Reaumur : Do woodlice breed without coupling ? In order 

 to decide this problem, he kept watch over his insects for five 

 weeks. He compared himself to Argus, or Acrisius, guarding 

 Danae ! He had his reward. A letter came from Reaumur telling 

 him that his communication had been read to the Paris Academy, 

 that its great importance was fully recognised, and that its author 

 had been at once nominated a correspondent of the illustrious 

 body. ' You can imagine,' wrote Bonnet, ' what ambition so 

 premature an honour aroused in the soul of a youth of twenty. 

 I came very near to believing myself already on the road to 

 immortality.' His hopes must have been strengthened when 

 three years later he was elected a Fellow of our own Royal 



