RISAUMUR 251 



liis style the popularity of the elder naturalist. Reaumur 

 >eems to have been weak enough to feel some jealousy, 

 and was perhaps concerned in the publication entitled 

 Letters to an American, the anonymous production of 

 an Oratorian named Lignac, who lived not far from 

 Reaumur's country seat, and often visited him. In this 

 work Buffon and his associate, Daubenton, were treated 

 contemptuously, while Reaumur, his works, and his 

 collections were highly praised. Reaumur was the first 

 man in France to form tolerably extensive collections 

 of animals. Brisson, his curator, drew from these col- 

 lections the chief material for his work on quadrupeds, 

 and more particularly for his great Ornithology, in six 

 quarto volumes. These specimens, though imperfectly 

 cured, and most of them simply dried, passed into the 

 Royal Cabinet after the death of their first owner, and 

 long constituted the principal part of the bird collection. 

 Many of the coloured plates of Buifon were also drawn 

 from them, which explains the occasional resemblance 

 between Buffon's and Brisson's figures. 



" Reaumur's life passed in tranquillity, part being 

 spent on his estate in Saintonge, part at his country 

 house at Bercy, near Paris. He held no official post, 

 and devoted every moment of his time to science. 

 Public esteem and influence with the government suf- 

 ficed to gratify his ambition. In order to oblige a 

 relative who had been driven to resign the place of 

 intendant of the order of St. Louis, Reaumur purchased 

 the office, but only assumed the insignia himself, relin- 

 quishing the emoluments to his relative. It does not 

 appear that he was ever married. A fall, which he met 

 with in 1757 at the chateau of Bermondi^re in Maine, 

 where he was spending his vacation, hastened his death. 

 He died on 18th October, 1757, at the age of 74. 



