APPENDIX. 313 



absolutely necessary. It is impossible to separate 

 Geoffrey from his immediate predecessors or his cotem- 

 poraries, nor can we form an exact idea of the value of 

 his labours, unless we also take into account the rapid 

 progress which has been made since his death. A 

 subject of this kind ought not to be hastily disposed of in 

 a note ; and I hope, on some future occasion, to be able to 

 discuss it more in detail in a work, the idea of which has 

 long been present to my mind. I will here subjoin a 

 short and almost exclusively biographical notice of this 

 great man. 



Being destined by his family for the clerical pro- 

 fession, Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire was provided, at the age 

 of twelve, with a Canon's stall, and was sent to prosecute 

 his studies at the College of Navarre. Here he attended 

 the classes of the physicist and naturalist Brisson, who 

 speedily awakened in him a taste for the natural sciences. 

 On leaving college he attended the lectures of Haiiy* 



* Haiiy was a member of the Institute, and professor at the 

 Jardin des Plantes, and in the Faculty of Sciences. He was born 

 at Paris in 1742, and died at the same place in 1822. As the son 

 of a common workman, he appeared destined to follow the same 

 career, when his intelligence and his devotion attracted the favour- 

 able notice of the superior of a monastery, who undertook the charge 

 of securing to him the first rudiments of instruction. He was soon 

 sent as a chorister to one of the churches at Paris, from whence he 

 proceeded to the College of Navarre, and after that to the College 

 Lemoine, where he became second master. Here he also con- 

 tracted a friendship with Lhomond the grammarian, and, to adapt 

 himself to the tastes of his friend, turned his attention to botany. 

 He now for the first time understood his true vocation, and devoted 

 himself with the greatest assiduity to the study of mineralogy, 

 which was then taught at the Jardin des Plantes by Daubenton. 



Haiiy was thirty-eight years of age when he began his minera- 

 logical studies. At this time Linnams had already shown that the 

 regular form of crystals is due to the action of forces, which obey 

 definite laws. Rome de Lisle had made a considerable step in 



