Jump to content

Page:The Last link.djvu/99

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
CUVIER
87

trived with a view to the function it had to fulfil,—thus putting the effect for the cause ('Encyclopædia Britannica,' 9th edition, vol. xxi., p. 171).

George Cuvier was born in 1769 at Montbéliard, in the department of Doubs, which at that time belonged to Württemberg. He was educated at Stuttgart, and studied political economy. While acting as private tutor to a French family in France he followed his favourite pursuit, the study of natural sciences. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire heard of him, and appointed him assistant in the department of comparative anatomy in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1799 he was elected Professor of Natural History at the Collège de France, and soon after he became Perpetual Secretary of the Institut National. In 1831, a year before his death, Louis Philippe raised him to the rank of a peer of France.

Cuvier was the first to indicate the true