Paris, and in March of the following year Daubenton, through the
interest of Bernardin de Saint Pierre, procured him the office of
sub-keeper and assistant demonstrator of the cabinet of natural history,
vacant by the resignation of B.G.E. Lacepede. By a law passed in June
1793, Geoffroy was appointed one of the twelve professors of the newly
constituted museum of natural history, being assigned the chair of
zoology. In the same year he busied himself with the formation of a
menagerie at that institution.
In 1794 through the introduction of A.H. Tessier he entered into
correspondence with Georges Cuvier, to whom, after the perusal of some
of his manuscripts, he wrote: "Venez jouer parmi nous le role de Linne,
d'un autre legislateur de l'histoire naturelle." Shortly after the
appointment of Cuvier as assistant at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle,
Geoffroy received him into his house. The two friends wrote together
five memoirs on natural history, one of which, on the classification of
mammals, puts forward the idea of the subordination of characters upon
which Cuvier based his zoological system. It was in a paper entitled
"Histoire des Makis, ou singes de Madagascar," written in 1795, that
Geoffroy first gave expression to his views on "the unity of organic
composition," the influence of which is perceptible in all his
subsequent writings; nature, he observes, presents us with only one plan
of construction, the same in principle, but varied in its accessory
parts.
In 1798 Geoffroy was chosen a member of the great scientific expedition
to Egypt, and on the capitulation of Alexandria in August 1801, he took
part in resisting the claim made by the British general to the
collections of the expedition, declaring that, were that demand
persisted in, history would have to record that he also had burnt a
library in Alexandria. Early in January 1802 Geoffroy returned to his
accustomed labours in Paris. He was elected a member of the academy of
sciences of that city in September 1807. In March of the following year
the emperor, who had already recognized his national services by the
award of the cross of the legion of honour, selected him to visit the
museums of Portugal, for the purpose of procuring collections from them,
and in the face of considerable opposition from the British he
eventually was successful in retaining them as a permanent possession
for his country. In 1809, the year after his return to France, he was
made professor of zoology at the faculty of sciences at Paris, and from
that period he devoted himself more exclusively than before to
anatomical study. In 1818 he gave to the world the first part of his
celebrated _Philosophie anatomique_, the second volume of which,
published in 1822, and subsequent memoirs account for the formation of
monstrosities on the principle of arrest of development, and of the
attraction of similar parts. When, in 1830, Geoffroy proceeded to apply
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