42 $ NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. in. 



he had proposed to himself was completed, and he fell 

 peacefully asleep on the 6th of May 1859. 



Lamarck Cuvier St. -Hilaire. When Humboldt 

 visited Paris in 1804, there were three men holding pro- 

 fessorships in the Museum of Natural History in that city, 

 who had afterwards a great influence upon the study of the 

 science of living beings. These three men were Lamarck, 

 professor of zoology; Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, his fellow-pro- 

 fessor ; and Cuvier, assistant - professor of comparative 

 anatomy. 



The early part of the nineteenth century was, as you 

 will remember, a very troubled time for France. The first 

 Napoleon was carrying war and desolation all over Europe, 

 and Paris was kept in a constant state of turmoil for many 

 years. During all this time it is interesting to see how 

 steadily and quietly the three men I have mentioned pur- 

 sued their search after knowledge. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire 

 twice risked his life in saving friends from the terrors of the 

 Revolution ; and Cuvier held political appointments both 

 under Napoleon and under Louis Philippe ; but in spite of 

 these duties and interruptions their scientific work was 

 never neglected ; and a great part of the knowledge about 

 plants and animals which we now possess was accumulated 

 during the troublous times of the French revolutions. 



Jean Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, the 

 elder of these three men, was born in 1744 at Bezantin, in 

 Picardy, and a somewhat curious circumstance led him to 

 devote his life to science. His father intended him for the 

 church, but the lad had a passion for the army, and on his 

 father's death, in 1760, set off to Germany, where the French 

 were then fighting, and soon distinguished himself as a volun- 

 teer. Some time afterwards, however, one of his comrades 

 lilted him up by his head in joke, and so strained the glands 



