4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



our cabinets, and then you can do with our persons as you please. 

 Yes," he added, to the astonished officer, " we shall do it. You are 

 seeking for fame. Depend upon it, history will give it to you, for 

 you also will have burned an Alexandrian library," These bold words 

 were reported to Hutchinson, and he rescinded the order for seizing 

 the collections. 



Returning to France in 1802 with the magnificent zoological and 

 zootomical collections thus literally saved from the fire, Geoff roy pro- 

 ceeded to classify them and prepare the description of them for the 

 grand work on the expedition to Egypt, and began the series of mono- 

 graphs that served as the point of departure and as supports for his 

 system of natural philosophy. He was already outlining his theory 

 of unity of composition, in memoirs which, aside from novelty and 

 elevation of ideas, contained, according to Cuvier, " facts very curious 

 and generally new, and added much to the knowledge of naturalists 

 and anatomists on the interior organization of fishes." These memoirs 

 secured the author's admission to the Academy of Sciences in Septem- 

 ber, 1807. 



In 1808 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was charged with a scientific mission 

 to Portugal, then occupied by a French army under Junot. He was 

 exposed to many perils in passing through Spain, where the people 

 were restive against the French invasion, and was held a prisoner for 

 several months at Merida. He used his influence with Junot, an old 

 comrade of his in Egypt, to make the condition of the Portuguese 

 more easy under military rule, and took away from the country many 

 cases of mineralogical specimens, plants, and animals, including Bra- 

 zilian ones, but in turn enriched the museum at Lisbon with a valu- 

 able cabinet of minerals from Paris, and set in order the collections 

 there, which had hitherto been only the object of an unintelligent cu- 

 riosity ; and, by his tact and reputation for a general benevolent dis- 

 position, he managed to keep what he had acquired from Portugal 

 when the French were obliged to give up everything else they had 

 taken from foreign nations. 



In 1809 Geoffroy was appointed Professor of Zoology in the Fac- 

 ulty of Sciences at Paris, and toward the end of the year he began a 

 course of instruction which was destined to have a great influence 

 upon his hearers and on himself. " From this moment," says M. Du- 

 mas, "his thought, sustained by the respectful attention of distin- 

 guished pupils, and particularly by their philosophical studies, sprang 

 more freely into the fields of abstraction, and succeeded in fixing those 

 laws of organization to which his name will continue to be always at- 

 tached, and which he had long perceived. Till then anatomical phi- 

 losophy, as he conceived it, had no existence ; it was with us and for 

 us that he founded that doctrine, endeavoring every year to overcome 

 new difficulties, fortifying his convictions with new proofs, and con- 

 , firming himself in his views by their success, even while they were yet 



