1800. } 
of natural hiftory, we offer the following 
particulars conc-rning him.- He was born at- 
Montbar, in Burgundy, in the month of May 
4716, and firft ftudied medicine, which ho- 
norable profeffion he propofed to exercife in 
his own country, when Buffon his country- 
man and his fenior by nine years, named, in 
1735, intendant of the king’s garden, propofed 
a few years aiter to him, to fettle near him, 
to attach himfelf to the hiftory of nature, 
and to afiift him in the great work which he 
was going to undertake. In 1740 the fate 
and the tafte of Daubenton were fixed for his 
whole life. More than half a century con- 
fecrated to the formation of the cabinet of 
natural hiftory, which in 1750 was only a_ 
neft of drawers under Geoffroy, and all that 
time fent in the methodical arrangement of 
productions of every nature, has placed him 
in the firft rank of naturalifts. In confidering 
him by turns occupied in. examining, dif- 
pofing, and defcribing the numberlefs ob- 
jects preferved by his care in the galleries of 
the mufeum, and at the fame time co-opera- 
ting in Buffon’s immortal work, we are 
ftruck with aftonifhment and refpect at the 
‘fight of fuch immenfe refearches,to which he 
had given himfelf up, and which enabled him 
to deferibe, with an attention almoft unknown 
till his time, the various tribes of animals 
whofe habits and initin€&ts Buffon has de- 
fcribed, but whofe anatomieal ttructure was 
entirely his own. The emule of Blafius, Va- 
lentine, Perrault, &c. &c. in comparative 
anatomy, he very foon left them far behind 
him in this career. While raifing to nature 
atemple, majeftic by the numerous riches he 
Has placed in it, and by the beautiful order 
which he has given them in the galleries of 
the mufeum, Daubenton has depofited with 
his defcriptions, 2 more extenfive feries of 
anatomical difcoveries than all thofe who 
have gone before him. Cowper, who is fo 
profound a judge in this refpedt, faid of the 
ihluftrious French anatomitt, that he was 
himfelf ignorant of all: the difcoveries of 
which he wasthe author. 
academy of Sciences in 1744, he never after 
failed to enrich it by the memoirs which he 
prefented to it during fifty years; the greater 
part of thera containing either unknown facts 
or new views upon the claffification of fheils, 
upon the hippomanes, the lives of the Al- 
jantoes, the humming-fpider (mu/araigie,\the 
bat, foflile bones and teeth, the fituation of the 
great occipital perforation in man and animals, 
the rumination and temperament of woolly 
animals, the defcription of feveral fpecies of 
new animals, orof thofenot fufficiently de- 
{cribed. It is well known how much we are 
indebtedito him for his deep enquiries into, and 
his. precif : experiments concernii:2 the natura- 
lization of the {pecies, upon the amelioration 
of wools, upon the treatment of fheep, and up- 
on the operation of remedies in thofe animals 
who chew the cud. Mineralogy alfocounts 
Deails abroad. 
Received into the - 
Als 
him amonz thofe who have had an influence 
on its progrefs. It might feem that nothing 
could be wanting to the glory of Daubenton, 
after fixty years of a life devoted to the ftudy 
of nature and the contemplation of her won= 
ders, when an epoch, ftill more glorious, 
marked his laft days. After ten years of 
revolutionary fhocks, a government founded 
upon the true principles of liberty and the 
reprefentative fyftem, conceived and at tength 
accomplifhed the projeét of calling to the firft 
functions of the ftate, virtues accompanied 
with every kind of talent and human know- 
ledge. Daubenton was placed in the confer- 
vative fenate, and thus faw himfelf join the 
civic palm, tothelaurel which already deco- 
rated his brow. It was in the bofom of this 
auguftaffembly, almoft, that he was ftruck by 
a mortal blow. Thofe who may be called 
upon to compofe* a due encomium on Dauben— 
ton, in confidering him fucceflively as an ob- 
ferver, asa profefior, writer, or academician, 
will particularize the new truths which are 
due to him; the multiplied difcoveries which; 
he has made; the great undertakings which 
he conducted to a fuccefsful period; the fyf- 
tematic works which his pen has produceds, 
the methods he has devifed; the paths he has: 
traverfed, arid thofe which he has opened ta 
his fucceflors; all the fervices ina word which: 
he has rendered to his country and to the 
world. Never cana finer occafion offer, in 
the hiftory of the fciences.and of the learned, 
to fhew to cotemporaries and to-pofterity what 
a diligent man, what a cyeative genius may 
add to the lights of the age in which he lives. 
The funeral of Daubenton was performed 
With great pomp in the national garden (Far~ 
din des plantes ci-devant, Fardin Royal) thei qth 
of the month, where he was interred up the 
little hill called Belvédere, not far from the 
Cedar of Lebanon: his remains wil! lie in. 
_ the midft of plants, of fhrubs, of trees which 
he planted or has defcribed, in the bofem of 
a garden which, during more than 50 yeafs, 
his labours have enriched or embellithed. 
More than 500 perfons, confifting of men of 
fcience, of jetters, and of the conitituted au- 
thorities, atrended on this folemn occafion. 
They allaffembled round his Coffin, placed in 
the large green-boufe, and which had been 
ornamented for the purpofe, with rich Gobe- 
lin tapeftry: the coffin was crowned with na- 
tural and exotic plants, difpofed as they ge- 
nerally are in the green-houfe; but thofe 
concerning which the naturalift bufied hima 
felf the moft, were preferred. C. Lacepéde, 
in this place, pronounced a funeral oration. 
The: cavalcade afterwards maved along the 
winding paths of the garden, following the 
mortal remains of the learned man to the 
oe Mls pret (23 4 
* One of his worthy colleagues, perhags. 
Cuvier or Lacepéde will perform this pleafing 
tafk. Thefe few particulars are furnithed 
by Foureros. 
: place 
