THE BAY OF BISCAY. 137 



this aged philosopher grew strong, and his eyes 

 glistened at the recollection of those days of his 

 youth, when, as a humble pharmacien attached to the 

 Army of the Pyrenees, he would wander forth at 



published successively a treatise entitled Essai d'une Classification 

 naturelle des Reptiles, the principal results of which have been uni- 

 versally adopted, and several important memoirs on fossil shells and 

 crustaceans. It is to this last work that we must refer for his ob- 

 servations on the Trilobites a family whose true nature he was the 

 first to recognise, but which has since then been so much multiplied 

 as to have become the subject of special treatises of considerable 

 extent. At this epoch, Brongniart had become the collaborateur of 

 Cuvier, and it is to their united efforts that we owe the work 

 which was first published under the title of Essai sur la Geographic 

 miner alogigue des environs de Paris (1810), and two years afterwards 

 under that of Description geologique des environs de Paris (1812). 

 Subsequently Brongniart made a great number of geological expe- 

 ditions, traversing every part of France, and a great portion of 

 Europe, and he has fully established a claim to be regarded as one 

 of the founders of modern geology. 



These different labours did not, however, make him lose sight of 

 a work on which he had been engaged for more than forty years. 

 Having been nominated in 1807 to the directorship of the manufac- 

 tory at Sevres, he wished to bring the light of modern science to 

 bear upon the manufacture of porcelain, and the results of his various 

 investigations were incorporated in a work, entitled Traite des Arts 

 Ceramiques, which appeared only two years before his death. 



M. Adolphe Brongniart, member of the Institute, and professor at 

 the Jardin des Plantes, is the son of Alexandre Brongniart, and the 

 worthy inheritor of his name. He first devoted his attention to 

 botanical studies, for which he was prepared by his researches in 

 minute anatomy and physiology. Among the works which he has 

 published in this department of science, we may particularly 

 instance his observations on the organisation of leaves and on the 

 fecundation of plants ; but M. Adolphe Brongniart owes more 

 especially the high rank which he occupies in science to his 

 researches on fossil plants. We may say that he is the founder of 

 vegetable palaeontology, as Cuvier was the founder of animal 



