3o HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM. 



hi 1 745 procured him the place of keeper of the ca^ 

 binet, with a lodging in the garden , and appoint- 

 ments which soon rose from 5oo to 4000 fr. He 

 charged him with the arrangement of the cabinet, 

 and associated him to his own studies , in the des- 

 criptive part of his Natural History, especially in 

 the anatomy. 



In 1749? on the publication of the first volumes 

 of the Natural History, which attracted the atten- 

 tion of all Europe , Buff on appealed to the libe- 

 rality of naturalists, whom he invited to send 

 him whatever remarkable objects they might 

 meet with in their researches. These he pla- 

 ced in the Museum; Daubenton arranged them, 

 and the building soon became too confined for 

 its contents. Buff on , who had already resigned a 

 part of his habitation , now thought proper to 

 abandon it entirely, and in 1766, removed to 

 n° i3 rue des fosses Saint-Victor. The collec- 

 tion was then disposed in four large saloons ? 

 which alone formed the cabinet till the reor- 

 ganisation. The two first contained the animals; 

 the third, the minerals; the fourth, the herbarium, 

 the ancient drugs, and different productions of 

 the vegetable kingdom (1). 



(1) The skeletons were still crowded in a separate apartment; for 

 as comparative anatomy then occupied but a small number of the 

 learned , those objects were not exhibited , which were not likely to 

 interest public curiosity. 



