Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/776

740  1em

1em  CUVIER, (1769-1832). Georges Cuvier was born on the 23d of August 1769, at Montbeliard, in tlie department of Doubs, then belonging to Wiirtemberg. He was christened Leopold-Chretien-Frederic-Dagobert, but afterwards assumed, at his mother s wish, the name of Georges, which was that of an elder brother deceased. His father, a retired officer on half-pay, belonged to a Protestant family which had emigrated from the Jura in consequence of religious persecution. His mother, a in the case of so many eminent men, was a cultivated and high-minded woman, who took every pains to de velop the nascent faculties of her son. He early showed a bent towards the investigation of natural phenomena, and was noted for his studious habits and marvellou; memory. His higher education was carried out at the A.cademy of Stuttgard the school of Schiller and other men of eminence to which collegiate institution he had received a nomination from Prince Charles of Wiirtemberg. Devoting a year to the study of &quot; philosophy,&quot; IB was enrolled as a student in the faculty of political conomy (&quot;Administration,&quot; &quot; Cameralwissenschaft&quot;) ; and after a brilliant university career he was thrown upon the world at the age of eighteen. A short interlude was passed as sub-lieutenant in the Swiss regiment of Chateauvieux, out this corps being disbanded, and his family being poor, tie accepted the position of tutor in the family of the Comte d Hericy, residing near Caen, in Normandy. He here spent the years from 1788 to the end of 1794 including the terrific epoch of the &quot; Reign of Terror &quot; peacefully occupy ing his leisure in the ardent pursuit of his favourite sciences. About this time he attracted the attention of the Abbe Tessier, who was sheltering himself from the fury of the Revolution at Fecamp, and who wrote strongly in favour of his protege to his friends in Paris, with the result that Cuvier, after corresponding with the well-known naturalist Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, was appointed in 1795 assistant to Mertrud, the aged professor of comparative anatomy at the Museum d Histoire Naturelle. The pre-eminent abilities of Cuvier as a naturalist and scientific observer were at once recognized in Paris, and the National Institute being founded this year (1795), he was elected a member, and was associated with Lacepede and Daubenton as the nucleus of the section of zoology. Detached memoirs on various zoological subjects had already been published by him, one of the most important being a joint memoir with Geoffroy on a new classification of the Mammalia. In this year he also published a number of researches, dealing with a very wide range of subjects, such as descriptions of new species of insects, the anatomy of Helix pomatia, the internal ear of the cetaceans, the circulation of the invertebrates, the classification of the invertebrates, &c. One of the most important of these, published in the &quot; Decade philosophique &quot; of the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Paris, dealt with the internal and external structure and systematic affinities of the miscellaneous assemblage of lower invertebrates at that time grouped together under the name of &quot; Vermes.&quot; In 1796 Cuvier commenced his course of lectures in the Fxole Centrale du Pantheon, and published a number of contributions to comparative anatomy. He also read his first palseontological paper at the opening of the National Institute in the April of this year, which was subsequently published in 1800 under the title Memoiressur les JEspeces d? Elephants vivants et fossiles. Throughout the years 1797 and 1798 his scientific activity continued unabated, as is implied by the production of various memoirs upon such subjects as the nutritive processes in insects, the structure of the ascidians, the anatomy of the bivalve mollusks, the nostrils of the cetaceans, the different species of rhinoceros, the fossil bones of the Gypseous series of Montinartre, &c. In 1798, also^was published his first separate work, namely the Tableau Elementaire de Vhistoire naturelle des Animaux. This volume was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the Bcole du Pantheon, and may be regarded as the foundation and first general statement of that natural classification of the animal kingdom, which his genius originated, and which is universally accepted by modern zoologists. In 1799, by the death of Daubenton, the chair of natu ral history in th.3 College de France was rendered vacant ; and Cuvier was appointed to this responsible post. In this year an important memoir on the blood system of the leeches appeared from his pen. In 1800, in addi tion to various scattered contributions to zoology and palaeontology, embracing observations on the Siren lacert&amp;lt;na. 