Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/48

48 would, I am certain, be more satisfying to his heart than all those called forth by his genius or talent. "Deprived by the first of our revolutions of the support of a noble and powerful family, whose protection he had acquired, and on which he had some claims by birth, Latreille was thrown alone into the world, in the midst of political tempests, without property or means of any kind, with a well finished education, an ardent passion for study, a quick and sensitive heart, and a delicate frame of body. "Having escaped, the proscription (who is there who has reached our times, after passing through these dreadful periods, without escaping the proscription oftener than once!) he was called, in a more favourable era to the Museum of Natural History to arrange the insects contained in that institution. He there found the means of perfecting himself in this branch of his studies, which he had always preferred to every other. In a short time he became in this department the competitor, then the rival, and finally the superior (not unquestioned although the fact was so undisputable) of those whom he called his masters. "He must needs obtain books. Many had already been published in Germany on the science in which he excelled: the library of the Museum, now so rich, was then very poor, possessing very few on insects, and no additional ones were purchased. Latreille, whose slender appointments scarcely sufficed for his most urgent wants, wrought for the booksellers in order to procure for himself what was