birds and quadrupeds. His scientific studies were encouraged by one of the professors of the Academy giving him a copy of Linnæus' Systema Naturæ. At this time he was studying philosophy and political economy, natural history, and the German language.
During a period of great anxiety and unrest (namely, in 1788), and at the age of nineteen, Cuvier became private tutor in the family of the Comte d'Héricy, whose estate was near Caen in Normandy. In this position he remained for six years—all through the Great Revolution; in the last year of his tutorship he heard of the execution of Lavoisier (1794), and during the same year his country was at war. The French conquered Flanders, overran the Palatinate, and took Treves; they also took Coblenz, Maëstricht, and Venlo, and nearly the whole frontiers of Holland, and many places in Spain. At the same time the French were defeated by the English in various sea-fights, and lost nearly all their West Indian islands. During this period of storm and unrest Cuvier was working quietly on his favourite subject. In the nobleman's family, besides learning the manners and etiquette of refined society, he was studying with great zeal natural history, comparing fossil forms with living species, dissecting molluscs, classifying animals, etc. It was at this period that he conceived the idea of his two great works, the Ossemens Fossiles and the Règne Animal—and he placed classification on an anatomical
