TRANSLATIONS AND NOTICES 
OF 
GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 
Report on the Paleontological Researches of M. Martz Rovavurr 
in Brittany and Ansovu. By M. Mitnre-Epwarps. 
[From the Comptes Rendus for 1847, tom. xxiv. p. 593.] 
Tue author of these researches, a man of humble birth, animated 
by a taste for study, has mstructed himself without aid from teachers, 
and has become a man of science by devoting to the observation of 
nature the few moments of leisure left him by the manual labour 
necessary to procure his living. It is only by submitting to the most 
severe privations, that he has been able to satisfy his intellectual 
wants ; and the spectacle of his studious and disinterested life might 
have sufficed to secure him the sympathy of every generous heart, 
even although his labours had remained barren of results to the 
science which he has pursued with such persevermg ardour. But it 
is not on this ground alone that M. Rouault merits the indulgence of 
the Academy ; his claims to consideration rest on real services ren- 
dered to geology and to the history of fossil animals. In reality his 
observations furnish useful data for determining the age of certain 
formations which have hitherto been incompletely studied, and throw 
new light on a great family of Crustaceans, of which there is no re- 
presentative in our actual fauna, and whose characters are only im- 
perfectly known. 
The researches of M. Rouault, begun in 1845, have been carried 
on at Gahard, Poligné, Bain, Vitré and Hunaudiere ; and he has 
collected at these localities, whose paleeontological wealth was not 
even suspected, more than six thousand specimens of trilobites and 
fossil shells, and has discovered many species which formerly had not 
been found in France, and some even wholly new to science. The 
collections previously made could give no idea of the abundance of 
these animals in the seas of the Silurian period. Thus, when M. 
Brongniart, by the publication of his beautiful work on fossil Crusta- 
ceans, drew the attention of geologists to the family of the Trilobites, 
only a very small number of individuals were known, and it might 
have been supposed that they had always been rare. Since that epoch 
VOL. IV.— PART II. E 
