Years rolled on and the worthy man became old, but still persisted in his simplicity of life and desire for study. He was so superior in intellect to the class to which he belonged, that he lived free from jealousy and intrigue. Probably few men have led a happier life than Réaumur, and certainly his useful works will last as long as mankind. At the age of seventy-four he met with an accident whilst riding, and died October 18th, 1757. He had no personal vanity, and, being influenced by the true scientific spirit, sought truth and not personal distinction and reward. Linnæus, whose life has been given under the title of a hero in botanical science, was almost as great a zoologist as botanist and mineralogist. His classification of animals produced as great a change in the direction and possibility of studying zoology, as that of plants did in the case of botany. It led the way, through an artificial system, by which animals could be readily known, to a natural system which united animals not only by their common general shape, but also by the nature, position, and use of their internal organs. His system of naming animals was equal to that of plants, and the reasonable generic and the applicable specific names, going together, stamped the animal with a kind of individuality. Classification, description, and proper naming were the important parts of Linnæus’s zoology. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. THE LIVES OF BUFFON, PENNANT, AND LAMARCK. The popular writings of Buffon, and his life—Pennant’s life—Lamarck and his life—The rise of popular natural history, and of exact descriptions and philosophical zoology. If natural history had never been studied in an easy manner, and had not the results of those studies been given to educated men desirous of knowing something about animals in popular yet correct works, very few men would have cared to become zoologists. It is the good, easy, popular, but not necessarily jocular book on natural history that, as a rule, excites the attention of the young, and stimulates the youth to obtain further knowledge. Such books were written at a very interesting time of the world, and just when they were wanted; and the writer was a very remarkable man—a man born to wealth and station, but who, like many others, preferred hard work and the study of nature to sloth and luxurious idleness, and even to the profession of arms, so much in vogue in the early part of the eighteenth century.