BARON CUVIER. 267 



the hand of the master guided him even at 

 this early age. Knowing the great interest he 

 felt in such productions, in one of my visits to 

 Paris, I took a collection of original drawings 

 for his inspection. Every evening during my 

 stay there, he asked for my book, and one morn- 

 ing entered the breakfast-room with a huge 

 quarto in his hands, and, putting it before me, 

 said, " Permit me to enter the company of 

 your friends : choose any two of these pages, and 

 I will cut them out for you. I amused myself 

 with drawing these figures when I was a student 

 at Stuttgardt ; and if" I were to draw them now, 

 I could not make them with greater accuracy." 

 This same facility for designing continued 

 throughout life ; and it is scarcely possible to do 

 justice by words to his anatomical drawings, in 

 which he had a manner peculiar to himself of 

 expressing the cellular tissue. His delineations 

 of quadrupeds were equally extraordinary ; and, 

 when lecturing, he would turn to the black board 

 behind him, with the chalk in his hand, and, 

 speaking all the time, he would rapidly sketch 

 the subject of his discourse, sometimes begin- 

 ning even at the tail, proportioning every jDart 

 with admirable precision, and preserving the 

 character to such a degree, that even the species 



