BLAINVILLE, Henri-Marie Ducrotay de, a distinguished naturalist, was born at Arques, near Dieppe, Sept. 12, 1777. About the year 1795 he entered the school of design at Rouen, but after a very short time he went to Paris, where he became a pupil of Vincent the painter. Attracted by the lectures of Cuvier and other eminent professors in the College of France, he commenced the study of anatomy, and in 1808 he took the degree of M.D. He now devoted himself to the study of natural history, particularly the department of myology, and he soon attracted the attention of Cuvier, who engaged him to draw some figures for one of his works, and to carry out some of the practical work of anatomy. He was also chosen by that illustrious professor to supply his place on occasions at the College of France and at the Athenaeum, and in 1812 he obtained the vacant chair of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris. His somewhat irascible disposition was probably one cause of the subsequent estrangement between him and Cuvier, which ended in an open and irreconcilable enmity. In 1825 Blainville was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1830 he was appointed to succeed Lamarck in the chair of natural history at the museum. This he resigned in 1832, being appointed on the death of Cuvier to the chair of comparative anatomy, which he continued to occupy for the space of eighteen years, and in the conduct of which he proved himself no unworthy successor to his great teacher. Blainville was found dead in a railway carriage while travelling between Rouen and Caen, May 1, 1850....