Daubenton so far forgot the little acts of injustice on the part of his old friend, that he afterwards contributed to many parts of the Natural History, although his name never appeared in connection with it; and we possess proof, that Buffon consulted the manuscript of all his prelections in the College of France, when he wrote his History of Minerals. Their intimacy was even entirely re-established, and continued to the death of Buffon.

During the eighteen years in which the early4to volumes of the History of Quadrupeds were published, Daubenton could give only a small number of memoirs to the Academy of Sciences; but he made up for this afterwards; and a great number 'from his pen exist, both in the collection of the Academy, and in those of the Societies of Medicine, Agriculture, and the National Institute. All of them, as well as the works he published separately, contain some interesting facts or some new views.

To give the names of them alone would exceed the limits of an eloge; and we shall content ourselves by indicating, summarily, the principal discoveries with which he enriched certain branches of human knowledge.

In Zoology, Daubenton has discovered five species of Bats and one of Sorex, which had escaped the observation of preceding naturalists, although all of them pretty common in France.

He has given a complete description of the species of Deer which produces musk, and made some curious remarks on its organization.

He has described a singular conformation in the vocal organs of some foreign birds.

He is the first who applied the knowledge of comparative anatomy to the determination of species of quadrupeds whose, remains have been found in a fossil state; arid although he has not been always fortunate in his conjectures, he has, nevertheless, opened an important career for the history of the revolutions of the globe; he has destroyed for ever those ridiculous notions about giants, which were renewed every time the bones of any large animal happened to be disinterred.*

The most remarkable instance, of his discrimination in this way, was the determination of a bone, which was preserved at Garde-meuble, as the bone of a giant's leg. He perceived, by means of comparative anatomy, that this, was the bone of a Giraffe, although he had never seen that animal, and no figure of its skeleton existed. He had the pleasure of verifying this conjecture, when, thirty years after, the Museum obtained the skeleton of the giraffe which is now preserved there.

* His papers on the various subjects referred to, will be found in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences.

Before his time, very vague ideas prevailed on the differences between Man and the Orang-outang. Some regarded the latter as a wild man; others alleged that it was man degenerated, and that it is his nature to go on four feet. Daubenton proved, by an ingenuous and decisive observation on the articulation of the head, that Man could never walk otherwise than on two feet, nor the Orang-outang otherwise than on four.

In vegetable physiology, he was the first who called attention to the fact, that all trees do not increase by exterior and concentric layers. The trunk of a palm, which he examined, showed none of these layers; roused by this observation, he perceived, that the increase of this tree takes place by the prolongation of the fibres from the centre, which develop themselves in leaves. He explained by this, why the trunk of a palm does not grow thicker as it increases in age, and why it is of the same size throughout its whole length; but he did not push his researches further. M. Desfontaines, who had observed the same thing a long while before, has exhausted this matter, so to speak, by proving, that these two modes of growth distinguish trees whose seeds have two cotyledons, and such as have only one; and establishing on this important discovery a fundamental division in Botany.

Daubenton was likewise the first who had perceived in the bark the trachea, or shining elastic vessels, often filled with air, which others had discovered in the wood.

Mineralogy has made such rapid progress of late years, that the labours of Daubenton in this department of Natural History are almost now eclipsed, and there only remains for him the reputation of having given to the science the individual who advanced it further. It is he who was the master of Hauy. He published, however, some ingenious notions respecting the formation of alabasters and stalactites, on the causes of herboriza-tion on stones and figured marbles; and descriptions of minerals little known at the time when he noticed them. It is true, that his arrangement of precious stones is not conformable to their real nature; but he at least renders the nomenclature of their colours more precise.

We find, more or less, in all these works of Dau-benton on physical subjects, that kind of talent which was peculiar to him, a patience which would not fail to try to divine Nature, because it never despaired of forcing Nature to explain herself, by means of repeated interrogations, and that skilful sagacity in seizing the slightest signs that might indicate a response.

We perceive, in his works on agriculture, another quality besides; namely, anxiety for public usefulness. What he did for the improvement of our wools deserves for ever the gratitude of the state, to which he opened up a new source of prosperity.

He begun his experiments on this subject in 1766, and continued them till his death. Favoured from the first by Trudaine, he received encouragement from all the ministers who succeeded that enlightened and patriotic individual, and he responded to it in a manner worthy of himself.

To show, in the clearest manner, the advantage of always keeping sheep in parks; to demonstrate the pernicious consequences of the practice of closing up sheep in houses' during the winter; to try various means of improving the race; to find means of determining, with precision, the degree of fineness in the wool; to become acquainted with the true mechanism of rumination, and to deduce from thence useful conclusions respecting the constitution of wool-bearing animals, and the modes of feeding and managing them; to spread the produce of his stock throughout the provinces; to distribute his' rams among all the proprietors of flocks; to weave cloths with these wools, in order to show their superiority; to rear intelligent shepherds to propagate the practice of his method; to draw up instructions level to the capacity of all classes of agriculturists. Such is a rapid summary of Daubenton's labours on this important subject.