BARON CUVIER. 9,Q'^ 



Plantes, in Paris ; and chance took him one day, 

 with the crowd, into the amphitheatre, to hear 

 M. Daubenton lecture on mineralogy. Minera- 

 logy henceforth became interesting to him ; and 

 chance equally befriended him in this new direc- 

 tion of his pursuits. Happening to examine a 

 mineral at the house of a friend, he accidentally 

 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 be- 

 came the M. Haiiy, the legislator of mineralogy, 

 the founder of a system which has been adopted 

 all over the world. Imprisoned during the fury 

 of the Revolution, he tranquilly pursued his stu- 

 dies in his cell, and was with difficulty torn 

 from it by his friend, M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 

 on the fatal 2d of September. In 1802, he was 

 appointed professor to the Museum of Natural 

 History. Pious, benevolent, tolerant, and de- 

 voted to his studies, no worldly considerations 

 ever intercepted his religious exercises nor his 

 scientific labours j and his mode of living was as 

 simple as the station from which he sprung : he 

 walked in the same places every day, took the 

 same exercise, wore the same fashion of clothing, 

 and his manners and language were equally 

 remarkable for their primitive simplicity. A fall 



