MEMOIR OP CUVIER; 11 



known by his Memoirs on the Mollusca, who treated him 

 with kindness and without jealousy, and who even now 

 looked up with deference to his talents, he did not remain 

 long inactive ; and, by the interest of the professors of the 

 Jardin des Plantes, he was, soon after his arrival, appointed 

 a member of the " Commission des Arts," and a professor 

 in the Central School of the Pantheon. 



In the same year, a new chair of Comparative Anatomy 

 was created in the Jardin des Plantes. M. Mertrud was 

 appointed to fill it; but being aged and infirm, and hardly 

 able to perform the duties, he was induced, at the 

 request of his colleagues, to receive M. Cuvier as an assis- 

 tant. Thus, in a few months after his leaving Normandy, 

 Cuvier saw one of his most ardent desires fulfilled, and 

 reaped some of the fruits of his previous studies. He was 

 settled in the Garden of Plants, surrounded by all the 

 riches of Nature which Paris could then present, his mind 

 at ease, and occupied with his favorite pursuits, and he 

 was conscious that he had won all honorably by his own 

 exertions. His next desire was to show himself worthy 

 of ifae confidence which had been reposed in him : he 

 labored incessantly to complete the collection of Compara- 

 tive Anatomy, which he had commenced upon the basis of 

 a few preparations and skeletons left by Buffon ; while, at 

 the same time, his lectures arid demonstrations were 

 already spreading his fame as a teacher widely over 

 Europe. It was in this same year of his appointment, that 

 he so conspicuously showed his intimate knowledge of com- 

 parative anatomy, in his memoir upon the Megalonix of 

 Jefferson, which had been considered an immense carni- 

 vorous animal, the enemy of the Mastodon. Cuvier beau- 

 tifully demonstrated the huge remains of this animal to 

 belong to the family of the Sloths, pointing out their struc- 

 ture, and deducing his reasonings with a clearness which 

 brought immediate conviction, without leaving room for a 

 doubt. This was among the first of those papers wherein 



