VIEWS OF GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE 21 3 



the museum, in charge of the department of mammals 

 and birds. He was the means of securing for Cuvier, 

 then of his own age, a position in the museum as 

 professor-adjunct of comparative anatomy. For two 

 years (1795 and 1796) the two youthful savarrts were 

 inseparable, sharing the same apartments, the same 

 table, the same amusements, the same studies, and 

 their scientific papers were prepared in company and 

 signed in common. 



Geoffroy became a member of the great scientific 

 commission sent to Egypt by Napoleon (i 789-1 802). 

 By his boldness and presence of mind he, with 

 Savigny and the botanist Delille, saved the treasures 

 which at Alexandria had fallen into the hands of 

 the English general in command. In 1808 he was 

 charged by Napoleon with the duty of organizing 

 public instruction in Portugal. Here again, by his 

 address and firmness, he saved the collections and 

 exchanges made there from the hands of the Eng- 

 lish. When thirty-six years old he was elected a 

 member of the Institute. 



In 18 1 8 he began to discuss philosophical anatomy, 

 the doctrine of homologies ; he also studied the 

 embryology of the mammals, and was the founder of 

 teratology. It was he who discovered the vestigial 

 teeth of the baleen whale and those of embryo birds, 

 and the bearing of this on the doctrine of descent 

 must have been obvious to him. 



As early as 1795, before Lamarck had changed his 

 views as to the stability of species, the young 

 Geoffroy, then twenty-three years old, dared to claim 

 that species may be only " les diverses. degenerations 



