THE ROYAL MENAGERIE OF FRANCE. 513 



and Meudon, wrote on the 19th of September, 1792, to Bernardin de 

 Saint Pierre, who had been appointed intendaut of the Jardin des 

 Plantes two mouths and a half before, to inform him that the old 

 •menagerie was going to be destroyed,^ saying that the minister had 

 authorized him to send to the intendant anything he might want of 

 the few animals that were still alive, and it seemed necessary for him 

 to journey to Versailles. Bernardin set out, in fact, with Thouin and 

 Desfontaines, and visited in their courts the subjects whose skins and 

 skeletons had been offered him for mounting. He saw that a better 

 use could be made of them, and appropriating as his own one of the 

 most recent ideas of the council of officers of the Jardin du Eoi, of 

 the month of August, 1790, he proposed to transport what he calls a 

 "public show" into "a place set aside for the study of nature, in the 

 interests of sciences and the liberal arts, for scientists and for artists." 



Such was the subject of the "Memoir on the necessity of uniting 

 the menagerie with the national Jardin des Plantes at Paris," which 

 appeared at the end of January, 1793, In it the author shows at 

 length the services which an establishment of this kind might render, 

 dissertating meanwhile, so as not to get out of the habit of it, on the 

 influence captivity has on the character of living beings; on the socia- 

 bility of the lion and the rhinoceros; on the interbreeding of wild and 

 domestic animals; on the migration and acclimatization of animals; on 

 the connection that ought to exist between a garden and a menagerie, 

 etc. Then, after having easily refuted some objections that he himself 

 raised, he concludes by proposing to take the animals, together with 

 the cages they occupy, and to install the whole at the Nouveaux Con- 

 vertis, that ancient monastery of which the maison Chevreul is the last 

 vestige. 



The Memoire sur la Menagerie was at the same time a request 

 addressed to the convention: it helped perhaps to bring the Jardin des 

 Plantes to the attention of some members of that assembly who were 

 friends of science. But whatever we may say of that pamphlet, it was 

 not that which a few days later started, in a strange and unexpected 

 manner, the formation of the menagerie,^ formally established twenty 

 months later. I will recount the facts as they are given in the original 

 documents.^ 



On the 13th of Brumaire of the year II (i>[ovember 3, 1793) a decree 

 was issued by the department of the police, signed by the administra- 

 tors Baudrais and Soules, directing that the living animals then being 

 exhibited on the Place de la Revolution and at some other places in 

 Paris be immediately taken to the Jardin des Plantes, where they 

 would be purchased, together with the cages which contained them. 



' They were going to make of it a breeding stable. 



^Cf. Auge de Lassus, Jardin du Roi, Museum d'JSistoire Naturelle, Rev. scient. 

 Vol. LI, page 229, February 25, 1893. 

 ■^ Archives nationaux et Archives du Museum. 

 SM 97 33 



