 Buffon’s leadership of the Jardin ended with his death in April of 1788 on the edge of the massive social, political and scientific changes that were to overtake France a year later. As the only major scientific organization to survive the dismantling of all other institutions of privilege by the Convention in the summer of 1793, the restructured Muséum national d’histoire naturelle continued as the post-Revolutionary successor to the Jardin du Roi (Blanckaert et al. (eds) 1997). In this new form, it provided an institutional context in which several aspects of Buffon’s grand undertaking in natural history were pursued in the decades following his death (Corsi 1983 [1988: chp. 1]). In the Revolutionary context of the new Republic, the Muséum also incorporated a new appreciation of the work of Linnaeus and the classificatory enterprise he had inspired. Linnaeus had been admired and popularized by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and for Republican French biology, Linnaeus and his descriptive approach to biology was often seen in favorable contrast to that of Buffon, which was viewed as a symbol of the Ancien régime. The two leaders of natural history in effect became for the French naturalists what George Cuvier (1769–1832) later described as “two founts” from which they jointly drew their inspiration.