Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/51

Rh left to a young and skilful professor, already accustomed to supply his place, all the fatigues of instruction. After so many labours, no one apparently could have had any thing to object. But his delicate conscience would not allow him to enjoy all the advantages of a place without filling it. Perhaps also he was not insensible to the glory of this new career of professorship which was opened before him. In order to pursue it with sucesss, he engaged in extensive works, when his health, which had been for a long while much altered, would have required the most absolute repose. Then, also, a new and entire overthrow in the state, which no one had foreseen (not even those by whom it was brought about), gave him a new shock, and all these things combined, at last crushed the energies of a constitution already enfeebled by so much watching and fatigue. I shall here transcribe the last note I received from him, because nothing can show better the state to which he was reduced when he wrote his last work, and evince his prodigious perseverance, when he had set himself to the fulfilment of his duties.

"'In order that my fellow-member and friend, M. Walckenaer, may consult my memoir on Bombyx, forming part of my Cours sur l'Entomologie, I have had a copy prepared of twenty-three leaves of the first volume of my lectures. This memoir commences at page 94 and terminates at page 115. M. Latreille will afterwards complete the copy. He entreats his confrère to excuse him for the many