BARON CUVIER. 113 



De Saussure had not travelled, Deluc had not written, nor 

 Werner, by the force of his extraordinary genius, arranged 

 the mineral universe ; and, after years of scientific labour, 

 was appointed to the Ecole des Mines, established in Paris ; 

 and in tracing his influence in this professorship, M. Cuvier 

 thus speaks : " Our products in iron are quadrupled ; the 

 mines of this metal opened, near the Loire, in the region of 

 coal, and in the midst of combustible matter, are about to 

 yield iron at the same price as in England. Antimony, 

 manganese, which we formerly imported, are now exported 

 in considerable quantities. Chrome, discovered by one of 

 our chemists, is also the useful product of one of our mines. 

 Zinc and tin have already been extracted from the mines on 

 the coast of Britany. Alum and vitriol, formerly almost 

 unknown in France, are collected in abundance. An im- 

 mense mass of rock salt has just been discovered in Lor- 

 raine ; and all promises that these new creations will not 

 stop here. Doubtless, it is not to a single man, nor to the 

 appointment of a single professorship, that all this may be 

 attributed ; but it is not the less true, that this one man, 

 this one professorship, has been the primary cause of these 

 advantages." 



The name of M. Haiiy, the geologist, the mineralogist, the 

 founder of crystallography, forms a sort of oracle in the 

 learned world, and I have a peculiar pleasure in dwelling 

 on this eloge, because it is one of the most admirable of all, 

 and does honour to M. Cuvier's heart, showing how entirely 

 he was independent of selfish feelings, how truly just he 

 could be, even to those who had opposed him with hostile 

 sentiments. The extraordinary man here spoken of com- 

 menced the world as a chorister, and studied natural philoso- 

 phy and botany as amusements. These tastes led him 

 frequently to the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris ; and chance 

 took him one day, with the crowd, into the amphitheatre, to 

 hear M. Daubenton lecture on mineralogy. Mineralogy 

 henceforth became interesting to him ; and chance equally 

 befriended him in this new direction of his pursuits. Hap- 

 pening to examine a mineral at the house of a friend, he 

 accidently let fall a beautiful group of calcareous spar ; the 

 fracture of one of the prismatic crystals opened a new world 

 of ideas to him, and he became the M. Hauy, the legislator 



K* 



