GEOFFROY SAINT-HILAIRE, ETIENNE, a French zoologist mid physiologist, was b. at Etampes in 1772, and d. at Paris He was destined by his family for the profession, and sent to prosecute his studies at the college of Navarre, where, he attended the lectures of Brisson, who speedily awakened in him a taste for the natural sciences. He subsequently became a pupil of Hay (q.v.) and of Daubenton; and the relations which were soon established between his masters and himself were attended with the happiest results to science, since they decided the future prospects of Geoffroy, and saved the life of HMV, who had been imprisoned as a refractory priest, and whom Geoffroy rescued from prison on the very eve of the massacres of Sept. 1792. A few months afterwards, Hany obtained for him the post of sub-keeper and assistant., demonstrator at the Jardin des Plantes; and in June, 1793, on the reorganization of the institution, he was nominated professor of the zoology of vertebrated animals. At first, he refused to accept the chair, on the ground that all his studies had been directed to mineralogy; but he finally yielded to the urgent persuasion of his old master Daubenton, and at once set resolutely to work. At this time, he was only 21 years of age.
Immediately after his installation, he commenced the foundation of the menagerie the Jardin des Plantes, its beginning being three itinerant collections of animals that had been confiscated by the police, and were conveyed to the museum. All the departments of the museum over which lie had charge soon exhibited signs of biA vigorous administration; and the zoological collection became the richest in the world.
In 1795, Geoffroy having heard from the Abbe Tessier that he had found a young man in the wilds of Normandy who was devoting all his leisure time to natural history, and having subsequently received from the stranger a communication containing some account of his investigations, wrote thus to his unknown correspondent: "Come to Paris without delay; come and assume the place of a new Linnaeus, and become another founder of natural history." It was thus that Georges Cuvier was called to Paris by the prophetic summons of Geoffroy. An intimate friendship was soon established between them, which, although long afterwards broken by the asperity of scientific dis. cussion, was finally revived with all its original warmth in their later days.
In 1798, Geoffroy formed one of the scientific commission that accompanied Bona parte to Egypt, and be remained in that country until the surrender of Alexandria in 1801. He succeeded in bringing to France valuable collections of natural history speci mens; and memoirs in which he described them led to his election, in 1807, into the academy of sciences. In 1808, he was charged with a scientific mission to Portugal, the object of which was to obtain from the collections in that kingdom all the speci mens which were wanting in those of France. On his return, he was appointed to the professorship of zoology in the faculty of science at Paris, and from that time he under took no more expeditions, but devoted himself almost exclusively to science: In the latter years of his life, he was stricken with total blindness, but the physical repose to which he was consequently condemned, seemed to increase his intellectual activity; and to the very last days of his life, he was occupied with those abstruse questions of biology which had influenced his whole scientific career. Throughout almost all his writings, we find him endeavoring to establish one great proposition—namely, the unity of the organic plan of the animal kingdom. This was the point on which he and Cuvier mainly differed, and on which there were very warm discussions between these two eminent naturalists in the academy of sciences in 1830. In edition to numerous memoirs in various scientific periodicals, he published various works, amongst which we may mention his Philosophie Anatomique (2 vols. 1818-20), which contains the exposition of his theory; Prineipes de la Philosophie Zoologique (1830), which gives a synopsis of his dis cussions with Cuvier; Etudes Progressives Naturalists (1835); Notions de Philosophic Naturelle (1838); and (in conjunction with Frederic Cuvier), Histoire Naturelle des lictmraTeres (3 vols. folio, 1820-1842). His son has published an excellent history of his life and labors, under the title, Vie, Travaux, et Doctrine Scientifique d'E. Geoffrey Saint Hilaire (1848), to which, as well as to L'Eloge Ilisterique de Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire by Flourens, we are indebted for many of the details contained in this sketch. We may also refer to a very able sketch of the life and doctrines of this great naturalist, in the appendix to De Quatrefages's Rambles of' a Naturalist, vol. i. pp. 312-324.