ralogy. He was the means of liberating
Hauey from a political prison; the Abbe, as the result of the events of
August, 1792, being promptly set free at the request of the Academy of
Sciences. The young Geoffroy was in his turn aided by the illustrious
Hauey, who obtained for him the position of sub-guardian and demonstrator
of mineralogy in the Cabinet of Natural History. At the early age of
twenty-one years, as we have seen, he was elected professor of zooelogy
in the museum, in charge of the department of mammals and birds. He was
the means of securing for Cuvier, then of his own age, a position in the
museum as professor-adjunct of comparative anatomy. For two years (1795
and 1796) the two youthful savants were inseparable, sharing the same
apartments, the same table, the same amusements, the same studies, and
their scientific papers were prepared in company and signed in common.

[Illustration: E. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE]

Geoffroy became a member of the great scientific commission sent to
Egypt by Napoleon (1789-1802). By his boldness and presence of mind he,
with Savigny and the botanist Delille, saved the treasures which at
Alexandria had fallen into the hands of the English general in command.
In 1808 he was charged by Napoleon with the duty of organizing public
instruction in Portugal. Here again, by his address and firmness, he
saved the collections and exchanges made there from the hands of the
English. When thirty-six years old he was elected a member of the
Institute.

In 1818 he began to discuss philosophical anatomy, the doctrine of
homologies; he also studied the embryology of the mammals, and was the
founder of teratology. It was he who discovered the vestigial teeth of
the baleen whale and those of embryo birds, and the bearing of this on
the doctrine of descent must have been obvious to him.

As early as 1795, before Lamarck had changed his views as to the
stability of species, the young Geoffroy, then twenty-three years old,
dared to claim that species may be only "_les diverses degenerations
d'un meme type_." These views he did not abandon, nor, on the other
hand, did he actively promulgate them. It was not until thirty years
later, in his memoir on the anatomy of the gavials, that he began the
series of his works bearing on the question of species. In 1831 was held
the famous debates between himself and Cuvier in the Academy of
Sciences. But the contest was not so much on the causes of the variatio