[French faculty of the imperial University of Vilnius in the beginning of the 19th century].

Known under the name of Vilna at the beginning of the 19th century, Vilnius (today the capital of Lithuania) was then a fast-expanding city, at a crossroads of sciences and arts in Europe. The mainspring of this influence was indisputably its University, the first in Russia considering the number of students, above those of Dorpat (today Tartu) and Moscow. When the University was secularized in 1773, among the new disciplines introduced, was natural history.