I40 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



The French geologist Faujas,* who also published 

 several articles on fossil animals, ceased his labors, 

 and now Cuvier began his memorable work. 



The field of the labors and triumphs of palaeon- 

 tology were now transferred to France. We have 

 seen that the year 1793, when Lamarck and Geof- 

 froy Saint-Hilaire were appointed to fill the new 

 zoological chairs, and the latter had in 1795 called 

 Cuvier from Normandy to Paris, was a time of re- 

 nascence of the natural sciences in France. Cuvier 

 began a course of lectures on comparative anatomy 

 at the Museum of Natural History. He was more 

 familiar than any one else in France with the prog- 

 ress in natural science in Germany, and had felt the 

 stimulus arising from this source '; besides, as Blain- 

 ville stated, he was also impelled by the questions 

 boldly raised by Faujas in his geological lectures, 

 who was somewhat of the school of Buffon. Cuvier, 

 moreover, had at his disposition the collection of 

 skeletons of the Museum, which was frequently in- 

 creased by those of the animals which died in the 

 menagerie. With his knowledge of comparative anat- 

 omy, of which, after Vicq-d'Azyr, he was the chief 

 founder, and with the gypsum quarry of Montmartre, 

 that rich cemetery of tertiary mammals, to draw 

 from, he had the whole field before him, and rapidly 



* Faujas Saint-Fond wrote articles on fossil bones (1794) ; on fossil 

 plants both of France (1803) and of Monte Bolca (1820) ; on a fish 

 from Nanterre (1802) and a fossil turtle (1803) ; on two species of 

 fossil ox, whose skulls were found in Germany, France, and England 

 (1S03), and on an elephant's tusk found in the volcanic tufa of Darbres 

 (1803) ; on the fossil shells of Mayence (1806) ; and on a new genus 

 (Clotho) of bivalve shells. 



