CHAPTER XXXVIII.

SCIENCE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (CONTINUED).

The three Naturalists, Lamarck, Cuvier, and Geoffroy St.-HilaireCuvier begins the Museum of Comparative Anatomy-Lamarck's History of Invertebrate Animals-Geoffroy St.-Hilaire brings Natural History Collections from Egypt-Lamarck on the Development of Animals-Geoffroy St.-Hilaire on Homology,' or the similarity in the parts of different Animals-Cuvier's 'Règne Animal,' and his Classification of Animals-Cuvier on the perfect agreement between the different parts of an Animal-He studies and restores the remains of Fossil Animals-His 'Ossemens Fossiles'-Death of Cuvier-Von Baer on the study of Embryology-His History of the Development of Animals, 1828.

Lamarck-Cuvier-St.-Hilaire.-When Humboldt visited Paris in 1804 there were three men holding professorships in the Museum of Natural History in that city, who had afterwards a great influence upon the study of the science of living beings. These three men were Lamarck, professor of zoology; Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, his fellow-professor; and Cuvier, assistant-professor of comparative anatomy.

The early part of the nineteenth century was, as you will remember, a very troubled time for France. The first Napoleon was carrying war and desolation all over Europe, and Paris was kept in a constant state of turmoil for many years. During all this time it is interesting to see how steadily and quietly the three men I have mentioned pursued their search after knowledge. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire

CH. XXXVIII.

LAMARCK-CUVIER.

389

twice risked his life in saving friends from the terrors of the Revolution; and Cuvier held political appointments both under Napoleon and under Louis Philippe ; but in spite of these duties and interruptions their scientific work was never neglected; and a great part of the knowledge about plants and animals which we now possess was accumulated during the troublous times of the French revolutions.

Jean Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, the elder of these three men, was born in 1744 at Bezantin, in Picardy, and a somewhat curious circumstance led him to devote his life to science. His father intended him for the church, but the lad had a passion for the army, and on his father's death, in 1760, set off to Germany, where the French were then fighting, and soon distinguished himself as a volunteer. Some time afterwards, however, one of his comrades lifted him up by his head in joke, and so strained the glands of the neck that after a very severe illness he was obliged to give up his profession and become a banker's clerk in Paris. He had thus time and opportunity to study natural science, for which he had always had a great liking, and in 1778 he published a small book on botany. Buffon, who was then at the height of his fame, was pleased with this work, and procured for Lamarck an appointment in the botanical department of the Académie des Sciences. From there he went to the Jardin des Plantes, and eventually became professor of geology in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle.

George Leopold Cuvier, afterwards made Baron Cuvier by Louis XVIII., was born of Swiss parents at Montbéliard, near Bésançon, in 1769. He, too, was intended for the church, because his parents were not rich and he had an uncle who could help him in that profession; but Prince Charles of Wurtemberg having heard of his abilities, sent for him and

gave him a free education in the Académie Caroline at the University of Stuttgard. Here he already began in his spare moments to read books of natural history and make drawings of plants and animals. When he left Stuttgard he went as tutor in a nobleman's family at Caen, in Normandy, and found a new and delightful study in the examination of the marine animals on the sea-shore. After living there six years, he happened to meet the celebrated Abbé Tessier, who had fled from the Revolution in Paris, and through his means the young Cuvier was introduced to Geoffroy St.-Hilaire and other scientific men in Paris, and became assistant-professor of comparative anatomy in the Jardin des Plantes. From this post he rose to very great honours both as a politician and man of science, holding the posts of President of the Institute, Inspector-General of Education, Councillor of the Imperial University, and many others of equal importance.

Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, the third and youngest of the three friends, was born at Étampes in 1772. It is curious that he also began his education as a priest, and that all these three men should have given up the church for science. In St.-Hilaire's case it was a passionate love for zoology which led him to persuade his father to let him stop in Paris to study at the Jardin des Plantes, where he was soon offered a post which gave him an excuse for following his own tastes. He afterwards joined Lamarck at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793; and in 1795 it was chiefly through his influence that Cuvier was invited to Paris and became their fellow-worker.

It now remains for us to see what was done by these three remarkable men. For three years they all remained at Cuvier had found in a lumber-room

work in the museum.

four or five old skeletons collected by Daubenton (p. 205),

CH. XXXVIII.

DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMALS.

391

and he determined to make them the beginning of a museum of comparative anatomy, which afterwards became very famous. St.-Hilaire worked with Cuvier, while Lamarck began the study of those animals-such as insects, snails, worms, shell-fish, sea-anemones, and sponges-which have no backbone, and to which he first gave the name of 'invertebrate animals.' Lamarck's work on these animals is one of the most famous he ever wrote.

In 1798 Cuvier and St.-Hiliare were both invited by Napoleon I. to go with the French army to Egypt and study the curiosities of natural history which were to be found there. Cuvier declined, but St.-Hilaire went, and spent three years examining the embalmed animals of the Egyptians. He succeeded in 1801 in bringing away the beautiful collections of these and other relics from Alexandria, when the French were forced to give up the town to the English. These collections were conveyed safely to the Museum in Paris in 1802.

Lamarck on the Development of Animals, 1801.-Meanwhile Lamarck published in 1801 a little work on the 'Organization of Living Bodies,' and in it he first suggested that the different animals were not created separately, but had been gradually altered from a few simple living forms, so that, in the course of long ages, there had sprung up an immense variety of species of animals in the world. It must be remembered that Lamarck had chiefly studied plants and the lower animals. We have seen how Goethe showed that all plants are only altered stems and leaves; and the lower animals, such as jelly-fish, snails, and worms, differ much less from each other than the higher animals do. Therefore Lamarck was very much struck with the difficulty there was in settling which were distinct forms or species, and

which might have come from the same parent, and he concluded that the only difference was that some had branched off from the common stock earlier than others, and so had become more unlike—just as brothers and sisters are very like each other while distant cousins are much less liable to have the same features and expression.

The more we know of animals and plants, said Lamarck, the more difficult we find it to settle which are related to each other and which are not. Linnæus had long ago pointed out that among plants which are well known, such as the willows in Europe, the cactuses in South America, and the heaths and everlastings at the Cape, there are so many kinds differing very little from each other that it is impossible to say which ought to be considered as separate species and which as the descendants of one kind of plant.

Moreover, we know how much plants and animals are sometimes altered even in a few years. For example, by growing in a drier soil or up a high mountain, plants become stunted and altered in many ways, while birds when shut up lose the power of using their wings, as has been the case with our domestic poultry. Man can make a number of different varieties both of plants and animals by merely keeping those which have the peculiarities he admires. The different kinds of pigeon, for example-the pouters, fan-tails, tumblers, and others, which are so unlike each other-are said by naturalists to be all descendants of the common rock-pigeon; and all the varieties of rabbit have come from one wild species. You cannot find a wild pigeon with a fan-tail, or a wild rabbit with lop-ears.

If man, then, in a few hundred years can make such changes, 'is it not possible,' said Lamarck, 'that nature in all the long ages during which the world has existed, may