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[Illustration: Cuvier]


Cuvier, the great naturalist, paid the debt of nature in May last,
after a life devoted to science with an unwearied application and a
success exceeded by none in modern times. He was born at Montbelliard
in 1769, a year which gave to so many remarkable men--a Napoleon--a
Chateaubriand--a Wellington--a Humboldt, &c. and his first discoveries
were on the Mollusca, and shook to its base the zoological
classification which then universally prevailed.

Invited to Paris to fill the place of Professor of Comparative Anatomy
at the _Jardin des Plantes_, his lectures speedily drew crowds around
him, attracted by his popular eloquence and lucid arrangement. His
next work, _Lecons d'Anatomie Comparee_, 1805, was rewarded by the
Institute with the decennial prize for the work which had contributed
the most to our knowledge of the Natural Sciences during that period.
At the same period he published a series of Memoirs on the Anatomy of
the Mollusca, and devoted his attention to a detailed examination
of the fossil remains of the bones of mammiferous animals; he
particularly examined the numerous fossils in the environs of Paris,
assisted in the geological part of his task by his friend M. A.
Brogniart. The sagacity and accuracy which M. Cuvier displayed in the
examination of fossil bones, raised this branch of inquiry to the