oe 
i MEMOIR. 
the Académie Caroline, an institution belonging to the university of that 
city. After having spent some time in the various studies which were en- 
joined on pupils of his age, Cuvier appears to have been closely attended 
to by the Duke, and, as there is reason to believe that the latter acknow- 
ledged some serious obligations in former times to members of the Cuvier 
family, so did he feel a peculiar interest in forwarding the views of the 
young aspirant. It appears, that though the youth was at first intended 
for the clerical profession, yet at Studtgard his studies were all directed 
to his education for performing political duties. We can readily believe 
that the courses thus enjoined upon him were sufficiently agreeable to his 
tastes, when we remember that they comprehended the branches of natural 
history. He seems to have had leisure enough to perform herborizing ex- 
cursions, to visit collections of objects in art and nature, and even to copy 
the representations of animals. At Studtgard he distinguished himself by 
obtaining many of the prizes, and succeeded in attaining the order of chi- 
valry, a sort of distinction which fell to a very small number of the pupils 
who won it by their merit. 
The accident of the retirement of Duke Frederick, the governor of 
Montbeillard, into Germany, deprived young Cuvier of his most powerful 
friend, and, for a moment, he suspended those ambitious hopes which had 
long floated before him. Without patrimony, or the means of entering 
upon any permanent system for his life, Cuvier was under the necessity of 
seeking out a tutorship. In 1788, we find him in the family of Count 
d’Hericy, at Caen, in Normandy, where he was engaged in the instruc- 
tion of an only son. The proximity of this Norman residence to the sea 
afforded to the active tutor facilities for such observations on natural pro- 
ductions as his instinctive inclinations led him to seek; and it was to the 
accidental opportunities thus presented to him, that he owed the impulse, 
which, in its subsequent influence, so vastly contributed to build up his 
great reputation. Cuvier, being destitute of books or other means of re- 
ference at the period we are speaking of, committed the results of his disco- 
veries to paper, and the manuscripts survived to be of essential service to 
him afterwards. At this interesting era of the life of Cuvier, a circum- 
stance occurred which must not be omitted in the detail of the auspicious 
events which led him gradually to his exalted destiny. At the little town 
of Valmont, near the residence of the Count d’Hericy, a society used to 
meet for the purpose of discussing points connected with the most im- 
portant public question of the locality, viz. its agriculture. At this so- 
ciety an individual of the place usually took a leading part; and it was not 
long before the penetrating tutor recognised in him a contributor on this 
subject to the Encyclopédie Méthodique, then a highly popular scientific 
work, published in Paris. Cuvier, in the ardour of an energetic spirit, 
