At the age of fourteen Cuvier quitted his home to go to this school, and under circumstances enough to frighten any schoolboy. He travelled with the chamberlain and secretary of the duke, sitting between them without understanding a word they said, as they spoke German the whole time. He always remembered this journey and its miseries. The youth quickly made himself comfortable at the academy, and his really good training soon placed him high amongst his fellows. For four years he studied all that was taught in the higher classes, mathematics, law, administration, tactics, and commerce, and obtaining various prizes, was made, with five or six others out of the four hundred, to belong to a class bearing the order of “Chevalerie.” These youths were under the immediate patronage of the duke, and had privileges besides that of dining at a separate table. Nine months after his arrival at Stuttgart, Cuvier gained the prize in German. But all this time Cuvier led a second life. Out in the fields and in the museum he was supremely happy. Collecting, observing, drawing, and describing were his occupations in his leisure hours, and his drawings of birds, insects, and plants were very excellent and correct. All the books he could get on natural history he read, and the works of Linnæus were especially learned with zeal. At the end of his academical career Cuvier was promised a place in the administration of the country, and if he had got it probably he would have become a kind of civil service clerk, and have never been heard of. But trouble came, and that of the bitterest kind for a rising young man. Circumstances against which he could not bear up necessitated his seeking a totally different kind of employment. The unsettled state of money and finance in France caused Cuvier’s father’s pension to be withheld, and the young man, very properly desiring to be no burthen to his parents, gave up all hopes of political distinction, and accepted the modest position of tutor to a French family, that of M. d’Hericy, at Caen, in Normandy. He was to educate the only son; and so, without bewailing his lot, which was thought a very sad one by his companions and admirers, Cuvier settled down to work and found that he was in the very position for using those remarkable powers as a naturalist, which determined his future career. The sea was close by, and Cuvier began to study the marine animals. After some time some fossils were discovered at Fécamp, and Cuvier began to compare them with the living things which most resembled them. Then the accidental discovery of a calamary led him to study the higher mollusca, or shell-fish. Cuvier also began to study the huge class of vermes, or worms, in which Linnæus had included a vast number of lower animals, and which Lamarck subsequently investigated. Cuvier examined the anatomy of the groups, and arranged them according to their resemblances in structure. This was an excellent piece of work, and it was done for