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BLAINVILLE, HENRI MARIE DUCROTAY DE (1777–1850), French naturalist, was born at Arques, near Dieppe, on the 12th of September 1777. About 1796 he went to Paris to study painting, but he ultimately devoted himself to natural history, and attracted the attention of Baron Cuvier, for whom he occasionally lectured at the College de France and at the
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Athenaeum. In 1812 he was aided by Cuvier to obtain the chait of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris, but subsequently an estrangement grew up between the two men and ended in open enmity. In 1825 Blainville was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 183o he was appointed to succeed J. B. Lamarck in the chair of natural history at the museum. Two years later, on the death of Cuvier, he obtained the chair of comparative anatomy, which he continued to occupy for the space of eighteen years, proving him-self no unworthy successor to his great teacher. He died at Paris on the 1st of May 185o. Besides many separate memoirs, he was the author of Prodrome d'une nouvelle distribution methodique du regne animal (1816); Osteographie ou description iconographique comparee du squeletle, &c. (1839–1864); Faune frantaise (1821–183o) ; Cours de physiologie generate et comparge (1833); Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie (1825–1827); Histoire des sciences de l'organisme (1845).