MEMOIR OP DAUBENTON. 
211 
His success has since heen surpassed. The entire 
flocks, brought by Government from Spain at the re- 
quest of M. Tessier, as well as those brought by M. 
Gilbert, have spread a fine race over the country, with 
much greater rapidity than Daubenton could do by 
means of his rams alone ; but he, nevertheless, led the 
way, and did all that was possible with the means he 
possessed. 
He acquired, by these means, a kind of popular re- 
putation, which was very useful to him in a dangerous 
crisis. In 1793, an epoch fortunately already remote 
from ns, when, by an overturn of ideas which will be 
long memorable in history, the most ignorant portion 
of the people had to pronounce on the fate of the most 
intelligent and nobly bom, Daubenton, now an octo- 
genarian, in order to retain the situation he had honour- 
ed by his talents and virtues for fifty-two years, required 
to ask from an assembly, which assumed the name of 
the section Sans-cnlottes, a paper of which the extra- 
ordinary name was Certificat de Civwme. A professor 
or academician would have obtained it with difficulty. 
Some sensible people, mixed with the infuriated rabble 
in the hope of restraining their excesses, presented him 
under the title of Shepherd ; and it was the Shepherd 
Daubenton who obtained the certificate necessary for 
the Director of the Museum of Natural History. This 
paper still exists. It is a document, calculated to throw 
light not only on the life of Daubenton, but on the 
history of this dismal period. 
