" Abauzit crossed his arms, and after some
moments of internal struggle, he said, in a tone of calmness and
resignation: "You have destroyed the results of twenty-seven years
labour; in future touch nothing whatever in this room."
The study of natural history more than that of any other branch of
science, seems to be accompanied by unusual cheerfulness and
equanimity of temper on the part of its votaries; the result of
which is, that the life of naturalists is on the whole more
prolonged than that of any other class of men of science. A
member of the Linnaean Society has informed us that of fourteen
members who died in 1870, two were over ninety, five were over
eighty, and two were over seventy. The average age of all the
members who died in that year was seventy-five.
Adanson, the French botanist, was about seventy years old when the
Revolution broke out, and amidst the shock he lost everything--
his fortune, his places, and his gardens. But his patience,
courage, and resignation never forsook him. He became reduced to
the greatest straits, and even wanted food and clothing; yet his
ardour of investigation remained the same. Once, when the
Institute invited him, as being one of its oldest members, to
assist at a SEANCE, his answer was that he regretted he could not
attend for want of shoes. "It was a touching sight," says Cuvier,
"to see the poor old man, bent over the embers of a decaying fire,
trying to trace characters with a feeble hand on the little bit of
paper which he held, forgetting all the pains of life in some new
idea in natural history, which came to him like some beneficent
fairy to cheer him in his loneliness.
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