610 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



lay the dishonored dust of the Medicean rulers of Florence, discrowned and. 

 plundered, not even safe in death from outrage and disgrace, while the artist that 

 they patronized and thought beneath their rank now wears a crown of immortali- 

 ty at which the world willingly bows down." — National Republican. 



CUVIER. 



As the scope of this magazine enables it to cull from all sources we gladly 

 place before our readers an account of the early life of the great anatomist taken 

 almost bodily from the pages of the late George Henry Lewes and which has 

 probably met the eyes of but few of our readers. — [Ed. 



It was a dream of the youth Cuvier that a history of Nature might be written 

 which would systematically display the unusual dependence of one organ of an or- 

 ganism upon another. It was in the Academia Carolina of Stuttgardt that ii> 

 1787 Cuvier, Pfafif (the once famous supporter of Volta), and a small circle of fel- 

 low students, who particularly devoted themselves to Natural History, formed a 

 society of which Cuvier drew up the statutes and became the president. They 

 read memoirs, and discussed discoveries with all the gravity of older societies, 

 and even published among themselves a sort of Comptes Renins. They made 

 botanical, entomological and geological excursions, and still further to stimulate 

 their zeal Cuvier instituted an order of merit, painting the medallion himself; it 

 represented a star with the portrait of Linne in the centre, and between the rays 

 various treasures of the animal and vegetable world. 



At this period Cuvier's outward appearance was as unlike M. le Baron, as 

 the grub is unlike the butterfly. Absorbed in his multifarious studies, he was 

 careless about disguising the want of elegance in his aspect. His face was pale, 

 very thin and long, covered with freckles and encircled with a shock of red hair. 

 His physiognomy was severe and melancholy. He never played at any of the 

 boys' games. He was reading all day long and a great part of the night. No 

 work was too voluminous or too heavy for him. '' I remember well," says Pfaff,, 

 " how he used to sit by my bedside going regularly through Bayle's Dictionary." 

 It was during these years that he laid the basis of that extensive erudition which 

 distinguished his work in after life. It was here also that he preluded to his suc- 

 cess as a professor, astonishing his friends and colleagues by the clearness of his 

 expositions, which he rendered still more striking by his wonderful skill with the 

 pencil. Cuvier's facile pencil was always employed; if he had nothing to draw 

 for his own memoirs or those of his colleagues, he amused himself with drawing 

 insects as presents to the young ladies of his acquaintance — an entomologist's gal- 

 lantry which never became more sentimental. 



In 1788, that is in his nineteenth year, Cuvier left Stuttgardt for Normandy, 

 where he Uved till 1795 as tutor in a nobleman's family. Here he was discovered 

 by the Abbe Tessier who sent some of his manuscripts and drawings to Paris 

 which, falling under the eye of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who though younger than 



