140 NATURAL HISTORY. 



year also appeared the first two volumes of his ' Legons 

 d'Anatomie comparee,' which at once took place as a 

 standard treatise on the subject with which it dealt. In 

 the first two volumes of this work Cuvier was assisted by 

 Dumeril, and in the three later ones by Duvernoy. 



In 1 80 1 his principal contributions to science were a 

 memoir on a new species of fossil crocodile, and a second 

 treating of the teeth of fishes. In 1802, Cuvier was 

 appointed commissary of the Institute to accompany the 

 inspectors-general of public instruction, in which capacity 

 he spent some time in the south of France, superintending 

 the foundation of the colleges of Marseilles and Bordeaux. 

 This office he resigned in 1803, in which year he married 

 the widow of M. Duvaucel, a contractor for the public 

 taxes, by whom he had four children, all of whom pre- 

 deceased him. The next few years of Cuvier's life are 

 noticeable only for their extraordinary fruitfulness in 

 scientific work, each year producing a harvest of valuable 

 memoirs or extensive scientific treatises, which will be 

 noticed immediately. In 1808, he was placed by 

 Napoleon on the council of the Imperial University, in 

 which capacity he on three occasions (1809, 1811, and 

 1813) presided over commissions charged with the duty 

 of reporting upon the higher educational establishments 

 in those provinces beyond the Alps and the Rhine which 

 had been annexed to France, with the view of affiliating 

 these to the central university of Paris. In his official 

 capacity of perpetual secretary to the Institute, he was 

 further called upon to write the 'eloges historiques on 

 deceased members of the Institute. It was in the same 

 capacity that he was intrusted with the task of drawing 



