Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

ENTRANCE TO THE HOTHOUSES, JARDIN DES PLANTES.

The intendant of the Jardin des Plantes, who rendered such incalculable services to natural science, has been reproached with having written his immortal pages in foppish attire, with a sword at his side and his hand adorned with ruffles. This reproach, which has been so widely reiterated, deserves refutation. When Comte de Buffon appeared in society it was with the exterior of a gay cavalier; but in his study, when he was at work, his costume was so plain that it shocked a Franciscan friar of his acquaintance who saw a great deal of him at his château. If he was extravagant at all, it was in the exercise of his natural benevolence, which assumed quite a princely character.

The name of Buffon attracted from all parts magnificent presents to the museum. The King of Poland sent him a splendid collection of minerals, and the Empress of Russia, who had failed to entice him to her court, nevertheless presented him with some of the richest products of her country. Nor was this all. Pirates, who seized every cargo which came within their reach, are said to have spared the cases which they found addressed to so great a naturalist.

More fortunate than the human beings outside, the animals in the royal garden were in no way affected by the Revolution. The hateful title of their abode, however, was naturally changed; and the former Garden of the King became the Museum of Natural History. In 1792 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of Paul and Virginia, was made director of the establishment; and the Convention, which with all its destructiveness showed constructive tendencies in regard to all matters of science, literature, and art, founded at the museum twelve chairs, which[{150}] were filled by professors of human anatomy, zoology, animal anatomy, botany, mineralogy, geology, general chemistry, chemistry in its application to the arts, agriculture, and iconography.

The number of some of the chairs has since been increased, and a few new ones have been established; but, fundamentally, the organisation of the establishment remains what it was at the time of the radical transformation under the Convention. The professors appointed by the Convention went to work with the greatest enthusiasm, and all the invaders and explorers of the time were begged to supply the museum with whatever specimens of natural history they could offer. The collection, moreover, was increased by the activity and success of the French troops, with a view to the greater glory of France, and especially of Paris. The commanders of the French armies brought back with them, in the form of booty, the most interesting objects from the museums of the conquered cities. Holland having been overrun in 1798, a number of the curiosities belonging to the Stadtholder’s Museum were forwarded to Paris; and the celebrated naturalist, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was sent to Lisbon, occupied at the time by a French army, to choose from the local collections whatever he might find suitable for the natural history museum at Paris. After a time the collection became too rich for the professors and officials who had to arrange it. Money and space were alike wanting; and at last the established authorities formally complained that the treasures forwarded to them by the victorious troops were too abundant.

Among the most celebrated professors attached to the museum of natural history may be mentioned Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, already named, Lamarck, Lacépède, and Cuvier.

The garden of the museum forms a spacious quadrilateral, bounded on the east by the Quai Saint-Bernard, on the north by the Rue Cuvier, on the south by the Rue Buffon, and on the west by the Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

Entering by the principal gate, the visitor finds himself opposite an immense flower-bed enclosed between two long avenues which were planted by Buffon himself. The avenue on the left leads to the school of stone-fruit trees, the collections of botany, mineralogy, and geology, the library, and the house inhabited by Buffon when he was superintendent of the place. The avenue on the right is bounded by the school of botany and the hothouses. Behind the botanical school a long avenue of chestnut trees leads by the side of the bears’ den from the hothouses to the quay. Between this avenue and the Rue Cuvier are the menagerie, the school of fruit trees, the galleries of anatomy and anthropology, the amphitheatre, the Administration, and, at the top of the garden, behind the hothouses, the labyrinth and the Belvedere. A number of exotic trees have been planted and cultivated in the Jardin des Plantes, thence to be transplanted and naturalised in France. One of the popular celebrities of the garden is the Cedar of Lebanon, which Bernard de Jussieu was bringing from the East with other specimens, when, made prisoner by the English, he was deprived of the whole of his collection, with the exception only of the young cedar tree, which he had sworn at all hazards to preserve. Keeping it in a hat, planted in suitable mould, he succeeded, after many vicissitudes, in bringing it to the haven where it has since so wonderfully thrived. The tree, cultivated with only too much care, wears an aspect which is not precisely that of its natural freedom, but which is not wanting in grandeur. “The old Titan,” writes a French naturalist, “several times decapitated by our icy climate, spreads more and more every year.”

Higher up, in an almost forgotten corner, in the midst of foliage, stands a column supported by a pedestal of minerals. This simple monument is in memory of a simple man. Beneath it rests the body of Daubenton, the friend and collaborator of Buffon, the “learned shepherd” to whom France owes its fine breeds of merino sheep, and the author of the new plan of organisation adopted by the Convention in 1793. Narrow, winding paths, overshadowed by yew trees, lead to the Belvedere, constructed during the reign of Louis XV. The bronze cupola of doubtful style, surmounted by a celestial globe, with a sundial and a motto, tells plainly the period to which this fantastic conceit belongs. The motto, however, is ingenious and charming: “Horas non numero nisi serenas”; in English, “I note only the hours of sunshine.” Buffon had here placed an apparatus which has disappeared. At twelve o’clock exactly the lens of the dial burned a thread, causing a ball of metal to fall with a sonorous clang.