THE EARLY DAYS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 161 



never disposed to calculate the odds of a game of chance, 

 or to exercise their genius on the details of ornamental 

 gardens. The longevity of a public man is variously 

 ascribed, according to the prejudice of the critic, to the 

 reward of virtue or to a supernatural evasion of the 

 justice of Heaven, and the remarkable longevity of the 

 early Parisian anatomists, only one of whom died before 

 the age of 75 years, may well provoke the doubts of the 

 irreverent mind. Their leader was Claude Perrault, a 

 member of a versatile family, who abandoned the 

 profession of arms for the pleasures of art, and became 

 one of the leading architects of his age. But he is no 

 less distinguished as an anatomist and a physician, and 

 it is mainly to his influence that a number of the early 

 members of the French Academy, who are usually 

 referred to in contemporary literature as the 

 " Parisians," initiated a movement which has since 

 been actively and continuously developed. The principal 

 members of the " company " were the " acute and lucky 

 Pecquet," as Robert Boyle used to call him, Louis 

 Gayant, the great figure of Duverney, Moyse Charas, and 

 the Jesuit Father Thomas Gouye. It is a commonplace 

 both in literature and science that a great book seldom 

 fails to attract an adequate illustrator, and the Parisians 

 were fortunate in enlisting the services of Sebastien Le 

 Clerc, again a well-known architect, and an engraver on 

 copper of outstanding merit. Only some of the plates 

 are signed by Le Clerc, but there are no peculiarities of 

 execution sufficient to justify the belief that other 

 engravers were employed. Of the numerous subsequent 

 editions none approach the first in the excellence of the 

 illustrations, and it is therefore all the more unfortunate 

 that so few copies were printed, since the work is now 

 practically unobtainable. We learn from Alexander 



