GEOFFROY SAINT-HILAIRE, saN'te'ltte, ETIENNE (1772-1844). A French zoologist, born at Etampes, France. He studied with Brisson, Hafiy, and Daubenton. In 1793, when only twenty-one years old, he became professor of ver tebrate zoology in the newly instituted Museum at Paris, and began to make the famous collection of animals in the Jardin des Plantes. In 1794 he invited Cuvier to Paris, and the two men became thenceforth associates in the field of natural history. In 1798 Geoffroy accompanied Bona parte to Egypt, where he remained three years. In 1807 he became a member of the Academie des Sciences, and in 1809 professor of zoology in the Faeulte des Sciences. Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire was by nature a philosopher, and by education an anatomist, and in his speculations held that a single plan of structure prevails throughout the animal kingdom. In this he was violently opposed by Cuvier, who was an empiricist and not a philosopher, and who maintained that four distinctively different types of structure were present. The two naturalists differed also
in their conception of the mutability of species, Geoffroy arguing for it, and Cuvier against it. He raised teratology, or the study of monstrosi ties, to the rank of a science. Of many works we may mention: Philosophic anatomique (1818-20) ; Sur l'unitd de composition organ ique (1828); Principe de philosophic zotilogique (1830); Etudes progressives, d'un naturaliste (1835); Notions synthetiques, historiques et physiologiques de philosophic naturelle (1838). For his views on species, and the relation he bore to Lamarck and the agitation leading to ward the announcement of the hypothesis of evolution, consult: Packard, Lamarck, His Life and Work (New York, 1901) ; Life of Geoffroy, by his son (Paris, 1847).