10 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



be procured by the interest of his benefactor. The events 

 of the times prevented the immediate accomplishment of 

 this object, and his pecuniary circumstances would not per- 

 mit him to follow the employment of a naturalist, which, 

 as yet, could yield him no emolument. Contrary to the 

 opinions and advices of his companions, he determined to 

 seek the situation of a tutor ; they thought the high abili- 

 ties he had already shown would be degraded, and his in- 

 formation thrown away ; but M. Cuvier entertained a 

 different opinion regarding the responsibility of an instruc- 

 tor of youth, and preferred a secluded but honorable in- 

 dependency a step which he ever afterwards looked back 

 upon with pleasure, as the means and commencement of 

 an intercourse with those men, to whom he was indebted 

 for the first rise in his afterwards brilliant career. 



In 1788, at the age of nineteen, he received an introduc- 

 tion to a protestant family, residing near Caen, in Norman- 

 dy, that of the Count d'Hericy, and was entrusted with the 

 guidance of the Count's only son. Here he saw all 

 the nobility of the surrounding country, acquired the forrra 

 and manners of the best society, and became acquainted 

 with some of the most remarkable men of his time. Nor 

 was the maratime situation of the place without its advan- 

 tages : he had facilities of examining the productions of the 

 sea, particularly the Mollusca, which gave him new ideas, 

 and led to the research and development of those 

 views which he afterwards extended to the whole animal 

 kingdom. 



From Normandy he accompanied a friend to Paris. 



M. Cuvier was now in Paris, where his ambition and 

 insatiable love for research had often, in imagination, 

 placed him ; he had long desired to be in that capital, to 

 which all Europe was already crowding, from the repu- 

 tation of her schools, and where that of Natural History had 

 been raised by the efforts of Buffon and Daubentoo. Sur- 

 rounded here by the savans of Paris, to whom he was well 



