He served for nine years as a cavalry officer until 1830, when he retired from the service. Prior to this he had published an historical romance (Zizim, ou les Chevaliers de Rhodes, roman historique du XVe siècle);[1] but now geology became his primary focus. In his earlier scientific works, which date from 1835, he described the Tertiary and Cretaceous formations of France, Belgium and England, and dealt especially with the distribution of fossils geographically and in sequence.