16 MEMOIRS OP 



Cuvier, although only known by his scientific papers, and 

 his intimacy with learned men, especially De la Cepede 

 and Daubenton, was made one of its first members, and 

 was the third secretary, appointed at a time when these 

 secretaries quitted their office every two years. 



In the spring of 1798, M. Berthollet having been 

 charged by Buonaparte to seek for savans to accompany 

 the expedition to Egypt, proposed to M. Cuvier to form 

 one of the number. This, however, he refused, from the 

 conviction, that he could better serve the interests of sci- 

 ence by remaining amid the daily improving collections of 

 the Jardin, where his labours could be systematic, than by 

 making even a successful travel. He always felt happy 

 afterwards in having thus decided ; the propriety of which 

 resolution no one can attempt to dispute. 



About this time, one of M. Cuvier's pupils, M. Dumeril, 

 who had zealously followed all his lectures, asked permis- 

 sion to publish the notes he had taken in the lecture-room. 

 These, in M. Cuvier's opinion, would have formed a. very 

 imperfect work, and he preferred going over the whole 

 again, devoting himself to the general and philosophical 

 notices, and those parts which treated of the brain and the 

 organs of the senses. M. Dumeril chiefly undertook the 

 details of myology and nevrology. The two first volumes 

 of the "Lec.ons d'Anatomie comparee " appeared in 1800, 

 and met with the greatest success, notwithstanding a few 

 errors, which were afterwards corrected and acknowledged 

 by M. Cuvier, who in common with all those who prefer 

 the interests of science to their own momentary fame, and 

 with the candour which always marks real learning, never 

 hesitated either to avow or to rectify a fault, a perfection 

 which mingled with his private as well as public actions. 

 The materials for these lectures were supplied by a collec- 

 tion, then in its infancy, and which was increased an 

 hundred-fold by himself; and those who have criticised 

 these early volumes, have been obliged to confess, that the 

 means of doing so were given to them by the author him- 

 self, who threw every thing open to them, even were it to 

 convict him of those unavoidable mistakes to which he 

 had been liable, from the then imperfect state of the col- 

 lection. The three last volumes of this work were much 



