BLAINVILLE, HENRI-MARIE DUCROY 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 August 1808 he took the degree of M.D.
He now devoted himself to the study of natural history, more particularly the department of myology, and he soon attracted the attention of Cuvier, who requested Blainville's co-operation in a work on comparative anatomy on which he was then engaged. He was also chosen by that illustrious professor to supply his place at the College of France and at the Athenæum, and he soon afterwards obtained the vacant chair of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris. On that occasion he produced his thesis upon that curious animal the ornithorhynchus, or duck-bill.
Blainville's 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 Lamareck at the museum in the chair of natural history, an honour he had well earned by his important contributions to that science. This he resigned in 1832 to become the successor of Cuvier in the chair of comparative anatomy, which he continued to occupy for the space of eighteen years.
His scientific writings are very numerous, and chiefly relate to the animal kingdom. As a comparative anatomist he proved himself a worthy successor of the celebrated Cuvier. M. de Blainville was found dead in a railway carriage while travelling between Rouen and Caen, May 1. 1850.
Besides a great variety of memoirs published in the Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, and in similar works, he was the author of Prodrome d'une Nouvelle Distribution Méthodique du Règne Animal, 1816; Ostéographie, ou Description Iconographique Comparée du Squelette et du Système Dentaire des Cinq Classes d'Animaux Vertébrés Récents et Fossiles, &c.; Faune Française, Paris, 1821-1830; Cours de Physiologie Générale et Comparée, Paris, 1833; Manuel de Malacologie et de Conchyliologie, Strasbourg, 1825-1827; Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Âge, &c., Paris, 1845, 8vo.