if they remained in the hands of the revolutionists, determined if possible to secure their liberty by stratagem. By bribing one of the ofiicials at St Firmin, and disguising himself as a commissioner of prisons, he gained admission to his friends, and entreated them to effect their escape by following him. All, however, dreading lest their deliverance should render the doom of their fellow-captives the more certain, refused the offer, and one priest only, who was unknown to Geoffrey, left the prison. Already on the night of the 2d of September the massacre of the proscribed had begun, when Geoflroy, yet intent on saving the life of his friends and teachers, repaired to St Firmin. At 4 o’clock on the morning of the 3d Sept, after 8 hours’ waiting, he by means of a ladder assisted the escape of twelve ecclesiastics, not of the number of his acquaintance, and then the approach of dawn and the discharge of a gun directed at him warned him, his chief purpose unaccomplished, to return to his lodgings. Leaving Paris he retired to Etampes, where, in consequence of the anxieties of which he had lately been the prey, and the horrors which he had witnessed, he was for some time seriously ill. At the beginning of the winter of 1792 he returned to his studies in Paris, and in March of the following year Daubenton, through the interest of Bernardin de Saint Pierre, procured him the office of sub-keeper and assistant demonstrator of the cabinet of natural history, vacant by the resignation of Lacépede. By a law passed June 10th, 1793, Geoffrey was appointed one of the twelve professors of the newly constituted museum of natural history, being assigned the chair of zoology. In the same year he busied himself with the formation of a menagerie at that institution. On the 6th May 1794 commenced his opening course of lectures, and on December 1st he read to the society of natural history his first paper, on the subject of the Aye-aye. It was in 1794, also, that through the introduction of Tessier he entered into correspondence with Georges Cuvier, to whom, after the perusal of some of his manuscripts, he wrote: “ Venez jouer parmi nous 1e rele de Linné, d’un autre legislateur de l’histoire naturelle.” Shortly after the appoint- ment of Cuvier as Mertrud’s assistant (see vol. vi. p. 7 40), Geoffrey received him into his house. The two friends wrote together five memoirs on natural history, one of which, on the classification of mammals, puts forward the idea of the subordination of characters upon which Cuvier based his zoological system. It was in a paper entitled “ Histoire des )Iakis, on singes de Madagascar,” written in 1795, that Geoffrey first gave expression to his views on “the unity of organic composition,” the influence of which is percep- tible in all his subsequent writings: nature, he observes, presents us with only one plan of construction, the same in
principle, but varied in its accessory parts.In 1798 Geoffroy was chosen a member of the great scientific expedition to Egypt. With Delile and Larrey, on the capitulation of Alexandria in August 1801, he re- sisted the claim made by the British general Hutchinson to the collections of the expedition, sending him word that, were his demand persisted in, history would have to record of him that he also had burnt a library in Alexandria. Early in January 1802 Geofl‘roy returned to his accustomed labours in Paris. He was elected amember of the academy of sciences of that city in September 1807. In March of the following year the emperor, who had already recognized his national services by the award of the cross of the legion of honour, selected him to visit the museums of Portugal, for the purpose of procuring from them collections, and these, though in the face of considerable opposition from the British, he eventually was successful in retaining as a permanent possession for his country. In 1809, the year after his return to France, he was made professor of zoology of the faculty of sciences at Paris, and from that period he devoted himself more exclusively than before to the study of anatomical philosophy. In 1815 he was elected political representative for his native town. Three years later he gave to the world the first part of his celebrated Phi/empiric A nutomiquc, the second volume of which, published in 1822, and memoirs subsequently written account for the forma- tion of monstrosities on the principle of arrest of develop- ment, and of the attraction of similar parts. When, in 1830, Geoffrey proceeded to apply to the invertebrata his views as to the unity of animal composition, he found a vigorous opponent in Georges Cuvier, and the discussion between them, continued up to the time of the death of the latter, soon attracted the attention of the Scientific throughout Europe. Geotfroy, a synthesist, contended, in accordance with his theory of unity of plan in organic com- position, that all animals are formed of the same elements, in the same number, and with the same connexions: homo— logous parts, however they differ in form and size, must remain associated in the same invariable order. With Goethe he held that there is in nature a law of compensation or balancing of growth, so that if one organ take on an excess of development, it is at the expense of some other part (cf. Darwin, Origin. qu'pccics, 5th ed., p. 182); and he maintained that, since nature takes no sudden leaps, even organs which are superfluous in any given species, it they have played an important part in other species of the same family, are retained as rudiments, which testify to the per- manence of the general plan of creation. It was his con- viction that, owing to the conditions of life, the same forms had not been perpetuated since the origin of all things, although it was not his belief that existing species are becoming modified (see Darwin, op. cit, p. xvi). Cuvicr, who was an analytical observer of facts, admitted only the prevalence of “laws of coexistence” or “harmony” in animal organs, and maintained the absolute invariability of species, which he declared had been created with a regard to the circumstances in which they were placed, each organ contrived with a view to the function itlhad to fulfil, thus putting, in Geoffrey’s consideration, the effect for the cause. In July 1840 Geoffrey became blind, and some months later he had a paralytic attack. From that time his strength gradually failed him. He resigned his chair at the museum in 1841, and on the 19th June 1844, at the age of 72, he died.
Geoffrey wrote—Catalogue dos Ala-mm {fires (Ill/411118611771 national d’IIz's-toirc naiurcllc, 1813, not quite completed; I’Izilosoflu'c (malo- m'iquc,—t. i. , Des organcs respiraloircs, 1818, & t. ii. , I'Irs .llmzstrwo- sités Inmmincs, 1822; ,S'yste‘mc dcniairc (lcs Ala-urmi/"in-s rt (has 01'scaua‘, Ist pt., 1824; Sur [c J'Tiucipc dc l’Um'ié dc ( 'ompusilimz m'ganiqelr, 1828; Caz/rs dc I’Jlisloirc 91((l‘l'7'tfll‘ flcs dhuumiflrrs, 1829; J'i'incipcsdCI’In'losoplu'c molar/{qua 1830; Jz'lmirs progressira. (l’zm Natu'ralislc, 1835; Fragimnfs bing/z'flp/u'qucs, 1832; Nuliolis synflzétiqucs, Izristoriqms, ct jilrysl'oiugiqms dc 1’]: ilosoph {c film‘urcllc, 1838; and other works; also part of the Dcscrijzlion dc Z'Eg/g/jllc par la Cbnmz'ission dos Sciences, 1821—30; and, with F. Cuvier, Histoire izatm'cllc dcs Mmmmflrcs, 4 vols, 1820—42; besides very numerous papers published in the Ammlcs (lu J]!’l(8éll7Tl—, the A7171. dos Sci. 7nd,, the Bulletin philomatiqm, La Décadc égypticnnc, La Décadc philosoph iqzw, the Rec. cm-yclwédiqur, JIIc’m. dc l’Acad. dcs ,S'cicnccs, and elsewhere, among the subjects of which are the anatomy of marsnpials, ruminants, and electrical fishes, the vertebrate theory of the skull, the opereula of fishes, teratology, palmontology, and the influence of surrounding conditions in modifying animal forms.
See Vic, Trat'auz', et Doctrine Scientifiquc d'IZ‘timmc (I'm-(frog! Suinl-llilairc, par son fila M. Isidore Gcojfroy Saint-lliluirc, Paris and Strashurg. 15-17, to which is appended a list of Geoffrey‘s works; and Joly, in 11mg. ('nircrscllc, t. xvi, 1856.
a French zoologist, son of the preceding, was born at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, December 16, 1805. In his earlier years he showed an aptitude for mathematics, but eventually he devoted himself to the study of natural his- tory and of medicine, and in 1824 he was appointed assist- ant naturalist to his father. On the occasion of his taking
the degree of doctor of medicine, September 8, 1829, he