CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 By HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE LIBRARY AN DATE D se 9 7% Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://Awww.archive.org/details/cu31924024733002 ‘ornell University Libra TTT Attempt at a reconstruction of the Profile of Lamarck from an unpublished etching by Dr. Cachet. LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION HIS LIFE AND WORK WITH TRANSLATIONS OF HIS WRITINGS ON ORGANIC EVOLUTION By ALPHEUS S. PACKARD, M.D., LL.D. Professor of Zoology and Geology in Brown University ; author of “‘ Guide to the Study of Insects,’ “‘ Text-book of Entomology,” etc., etc. «« La postérité vous honorera!”’ —Mlle, Cornelie de Lamarck LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. gI AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOMBAY ae / IQOI te 4S . Mae % x Ci 27/uJ | Att i LP Fal§ 2\ 2 CopyRIGHT, rgor) B LONGMANS, GREEN, AND co, All rights reserved Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York PREFACE ALTHOUGH it is now a century since Lamarck published the germs of his theory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that the scientific world and the general public have become familiar with the name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism. The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian the- ory of organic evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism ; the prevalence of these views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially in France, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder of organic evolution, has invested his name with a new interest, and led to a desire to learn some of the details of his life and work, and of his ‘theory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent years, and finally expounded it in 1809. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a more extended sketch of Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work asa philosophical biologist, than has yet appeared. But the seeker after the details of his life is baffled by the general ignorance about the man—his ante- cedents, his parentage, the date of his birth, his early training and education, his work as a professor in the Jardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place of his burial, and his relations to his scientific con- temporaries. Except the éoges of Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier, vi PREFACE and the brief notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, and Bourguin, there is no special biography, however brief, except a brochure of thirty-one pages, reprinted from a few scattered articles by the distinguished anthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in the fourth and last volume of a little-known journal, 2’ Homme, entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, ses Disciples, Paris, 1887. This exceedingly rare pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mor- tillet, with the assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. A. Mondiére, who with others, under the leadership of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a Réunion Lamarck and a Diner Lamarck, to maintain and perpetuate the memory of the great French trans- formist. Owing to their efforts, the exact date of Lamarck’s birth, the house in which he lived during his lifetime at Paris, and all that we shall ever know of his place of burial have been established. It is a lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with no headstone to mark the site, on one side of a row of graves of others better cared for, from which trench his bones, with those of others unknown and neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the cata- combs of Paris. Lamarck left behind him no letters or manuscripts; nothing could be ascertained regard- ing the dates of his marriages, the names of his wives or of all his children. Of his descendants but one is known to be living, an officer in the army. But his aims in life, his undying love of science, his noble character and generous disposition are constantly revealed in his writings. PREFACE vii The name of Lamarck has been familiar to me from my youth up. When a boy, I used to arrange my collection of shells by the Lamarckian system, which had replaced the old Linnean classification. For over thirty years the Lamarckian factors of evo- lution have seemed to me to afford the foundation on which natural selection rests, to be the primary and efficient causes of organic change, and thus to account for the origin of variations, which Darwin himself assumed as the starting point or basis of his selection theory. It is not lessening the value of Darwin’s labors, to recognize the originality of La- marck’s views, the vigor with which he asserted their truth, and the heroic manner in which, against ad- verse and contemptuous criticism, to his dying day he clung to them. During a residence in Paris in the spring and sum- mer of 1899, I spent my leisure hours in gathering material for this biography. I visited the place of his birth—the little hamlet of Bazentin, near Amiens —and, thanks to the kindness of the schoolmaster of that village, M. Duval, was shown the house where Lamarck was born, the records in the old parish register at the mazrze of the birth of the father of Lamarck and of Lamarck himself. The Jesuit Seminary at Amiens was also visited, in order to obtain traces of his student life there, though the search was unsuccessful. My thanks are due to Professor A. Giard of Paris for kind assistance in the loan of rare books, for copies of his own essays, especially his Legon d’ Ouverture des Cours del’ Evolution des Etres organisés, 1888, and vill PREFACE in facilitating the work of collecting data. Intro- duced by him to Professor Hamy, the learned an- thropologist and archivist of the Muséum d’ Histoire Naturelle, I was given by him the freest access to the archives in the Maison de Buffon, which, among other papers, contained the MS. Archives du Mu- séum,; i.e. the Proces verbaux des Séances tenues par les Officiers du Jardin des Plantes, from 1790 to 1830, bound in vellum, in thirty-four volumes. These were all looked through, though found to contain but little of biographical interest relating to Lamarck, beyond proving that he lived in that ancient edifice from 1793 until his death in 1829. Dr. Hamy’s elaborate history of the last years of the Royal Garden and of the foundation of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, in the volume commemorating the centennial of the foundation of the Museum, has been of essential service. My warmest thanks are due to M. Adrien de Mor- tillet, formerly secretary of the Society of Anthro- pology of Paris, for most essential aid. He kindly gave me a copy of a very rare pamphlet, entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, ses Dis- ciples. He also referred me to notices bearing on the genealogy of Lamarck and his family in the Revue de Gascogne for 1876. To him also I am in- debted for the privilege of having electrotypes made of the five illustrations in the Lamarck, for copies of the composite portrait of Lamarck by Dr. Gachet, and also for a photograph of the Acte ad Naissance reproduced by the late M. Salmon. I have also to acknowledge the kindness shown me PREFACE ix by Dr. J. Deniker, the librarian of the Bibliothéque du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. I had begun in the museum library, which con- tains nearly if not every one of Lamarck’s publica- tions, to prepare a bibliography of all of Lamarck’s writings, when, to my surprise and pleasure, I was presented with a very full and elaborate one by the assistant-librarian, M. Godefroy Malloisel. To Professor Edmond Perrier I am indebted for a copy of his valuable Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel, reprinted from the noble volume commem- orative of the centennial of the foundation of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, which has proved of much use. Other sources from which biographical details have been taken are Cuvier’s ¢loge, and the notice of La- marck, with a list of many of his writings, in the Revue biographique de la Société malacologique de France, 1886. This notice, which is illustrated by three portraits of Lamarck, one of which has been reproduced, I was informed by M. Paul Kleinsieck was prepared by the late J. R. Bourguignat, the emi- nent malacologist and anthropologist. The notices by Professor Mathias Duval and by L. A. Bourguin have been of essential service. As regards the account of Lamarck’s speculative and theoretical views, I have, so far as possible, pre- ferred, by abstracts and translations, to let him tell his own story, rather than to comment at much length myself on points about which the ablest thinkers and students differ so much. It is hoped that Lamarck’s writings referring to x PREFACE the evolution theory may, at no distant date, be re- printed in the original, as they are not bulky and could be comprised in a single volume. This life is offered with much diffidence, though the pleasure of collecting the materials and of put- ting them together has been very great. BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. L, October, rgor, CHAPTER I. II. III. IV. Vi. VII. VIII. XIII. CONTENTS BirTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER . 1 STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER . é . 15 LAMARCK’s SHARE IN THE REORGANIZATION OF THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HisTory “ . ‘ ¥ F : F « 83 PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY AT THE MUSEUM . 4 5 ‘ x g F a » 92 Last Days AND DEATH . - i é 3 w BE PosITION IN THE HIsToRY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SOME LATER BIOLOGISTS. ‘ i fi ‘ : . 64 LAMARCK’s WoRK IN METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE . : i , f 7 ‘ ‘ &99) LAMARCK’s WoRK IN GEOLOGY ‘ ‘ E - 89 LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF INVERTEBRATE PAL&- ONTOLOGY : : s : ‘ % . - 124 LLAMARCK’S OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOLOGY . . j : é . - : » 156 LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST. : . ‘ ‘ - 173 LAMARCK THE ZOOLOGIST ‘ 3 ¢ - . 180 Tur EvoLuTioNARy Views oF BUFFON AND OF{ GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE . : , F - 198 Nil CHAPTER XIV. xv. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. CONTENTS PAGE Tue VIEWS oF ErAsMuUS DARWIN . r ‘ . 216 WHEN DID LAMARCK CHANGE HIS VIEWS REGARD- ING THE MUTABILITY OF SPECIES? a 5 » B26 Tue STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAMARCK’S Views ON EVOLUTION BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF His ‘‘ PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE” . ‘ + 232 THE ‘‘ PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE” . 7 ¥ . 279 LAMARCK’s THEORY AS TO THE EVOLUTION OF MAN . i i ‘ i 7 . F + 357 LAMARCK’s THOUGHTS ON MORALS, AND ON THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION . 372 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LAMARCKISM AND DAR- WINISM ; NEOLAMARCKISM . ‘ , ‘i - 382 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . F 5 s : « 425 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ATTEMPT AT A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE PROFILE OF LAMARCK BY Dr. GACHET (Photogravure) . Frontispiece FACING BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FronrT VIEW rage - fi ‘ . 4 BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, a ee AcT oF BirtTH ‘ . a ‘ ‘ x c ‘ % 6 AUTOGRAPH OF LAMARCK, JANUARY 25, 1802 % x - © LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS . < a 5 - 20 BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW FROM THE WEST MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS, 42 1793-1829 PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK, WHEN OLD AND BLIND, IN THE CosTUME OF A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE, ENGRAVED IN T8e4 « « é ‘ P ‘ é - 54 PorTRAIT OF LAMARCK . ° ‘ e e ‘ 7 . 180 Matson DE BuFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED, 1793-1829 1098 i. Grorrroy St. HILAIRE . . . . . 212 LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EvouutTion. His Lire anp Work CHAPTER I BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER THE life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a man of genius who lived far in advance of his age, and who died comparatively unappreciated and neglected. But his original and philosophic views, based as they were on broad conceptions of nature, and touching on the burning questions of our day, have, after the lapse of a hundred years, gained fresh interest and appreciation, and give promise of permanent accept- ance. The author of the Flore Francazse will never be for- gotten by his countrymen, who called him the French Linné; and he who wrote the Anzimaux sans Verte- bres at once took the highest rank as the leading zoblogist of his period. But Lamarck was more than a systematic biologist of the first order. Besides rare experience and judgment in the classification of plants and of animals, he had an unusually active, inquiring, and philosophical mind, with an originality 2 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK and boldness in speculation, and soundness in reason- ing and in dealing with such biological facts as were known in his time, which have caused his views as to the method of organic evolution to again come to the front. As a zodlogical philosopher no one of his time approached Lamarck. The period, however, in which he lived was not ripe for the hearty, and gen- eral adoption of the theory of descent. \As in the organic world we behold here and there prophetic types, anticipating, in ‘their generalized synthetic nature, the incoming, ages after, of more specialized types, so/ Lamarck anticipated by more than half a century’the principles underlying the present evolu- tionary theories. So numerous are now the adherents, in some form, of Lamarck’s views, that at the present time evolu- tionists are divided into Darwinians and Lamarckians or Neolamarckians. The factors of organic evolution as stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many, really comprise the primary or foundation principles or initiative causes of the origin of life-forms. Hence not only do many of the leading biologists of his native country, but some of those of Germany, of the United States, and of England, justly regard him as the founder of the theory of organic evolution. Besides this, Lamarck lived in a-transition period. He prepared the way for the scientific renascence in France. Moreover, his simple, unselfish character was a rare one. He led a retired life. His youth was tinged with romance, and during the last decade of his life he was blind. He manfully and patiently BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 3 bore adverse criticisms, ridicule, forgetfulness, and inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to his dying day. The biography of such a character is replete with interest, and the memory of his unselfish and fruitful devotion to science should be forever cherished. His life was also notable for the fact that after his fiftieth year he took up and mastered a new science; and at a period when many students of literature and science cease to be productive and rest from their labors, he accomplished the best work of his life—-work which has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a philosophic biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism com- prises the fundamental principles of evolution, and will always have to be taken into consideration in accounting for the origin, not only of species, but especially of the higher groups, such as orders, classes, and phyla. This striking personage in the history of biological science, who has made such an ineffaceable impres- sion on the philosophy of biology, certainly demands more than a brief “oge to keep alive his memory. Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck) was born August 1, 1744, at Bazentin- le-Petit. This little village is situated in Picardy, or what is now the Department of the Somme, in the Arrondissement de Péronne, Canton d’Albert, a little more than four miles from Albert, between this town and Bapaume, and near Longueval, the nearest post- office to Bazentin. - The village of Bazentin-le-Grand, 4 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK composed of a few more houses than its sister ham- let, is seen half a mile to the southeast, shaded by the little forest such as borders nearly every town and village in this region. The two hamlets are pleas- antly situated in a richly cultivated country, on the chalk uplands or downs of Picardy, amid broad acres of wheat and barley variegated with poppies and the purple cornflower, and with roadsides shaded by tall poplars. The peasants to the number of 251 compose the diminishing population. There were 356 in 1880, or about that date. The silence of the single little street, with its one-storied, thatched or tiled cottages, isat infrequent intervals broken by an elderly dame in her sabots, or by a creaking, rickety village cart driven by a farmer-boy in blouse and hob-nailed shoes. The largest inhabited building is the mazrze, a modern structure, at one end of which is the village school, where fifteen or twenty urchins enjoy the instruc- tions of the worthy teacher. SS SS tor Re we é aig, a AG hha! 2 GY ph 22 OE A CS be cae 4 en ae pera? Se ae ae ee were w,2 Ce eee ese A aenieg [rt wo antes Se ope 7S es Ties reg ape? fl ae es! o i, ye. ao mes & @ LTS nS EY ory ae apr Wee i s 22 wore er > 4 a eee wb oS ‘ pec re = Zo ee ee es Aa eprwe ss Pd ext ” ihe 2 wt) we 2 va PLS Ste nd WAS - ba + Ie “> a, oe. ora > a va Fat ‘ i naar Ae MAS Nai S IE cd Sar i Jr sere BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 7 de l’artillerie de France demeurante au chateau de Guillemont, qui ont signé avec mon dit sieur de Ba- zentin et nous. Ont signé: De Fossé, De Bucy Michelet, Bazentin. Cozette, curé. Of Lamarck’s parentage and ancestry there are fortunately some traces. In the Registre aux Actes de Baptéme pour l’ Année 1702, still preserved in the mazirie of Bazentin-le-Petit, the record shows that his father was born in February, 1702, at Bazentin. The infant was baptised February 16, 1702, the permis- sion to the curé by Henry, Bishop of Amiens, having been signed February 3, 1702. Lamarck’s grand- parents were, according to this certificate of baptism, Messire Philippe de Monet de Lamarck, Ecuyer, Seigneur des Bazentin, and Dame Magdeleine de Lyonne. The family of Lamarck, as stated by H. Masson,* notwithstanding his northern and almost Germanic name of Chevalier de Lamarck, originated in the southwest of France. Though born at Bazentin, in old Picardy, it is not less true that he descended on the paternal side from an ancient house of Béarn, whose patrimony was very modest. This house was that of Monet. Another genealogist, Baron C. de Cauna,f tells us that there is no doubt that the family of Monet in Bigorret was divided. One of its representatives *«*Sur la maison de Viella—les Mortiers-brévise et les Montalembert en Gascogne—et sur le naturaliste Lamarck.” Par Hippolyte Masson. (Revue de Gascogne, xvii., pp. 141-143, 1876.) + [bid., p. 194. $A small town in southwestern France, near Lourdes and Pau; it is about eight miles north of Tarbes, in Gascony. 8 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK formed a branch in Picardy in the reign of Louis XIV. or later. Lamarck’s grandfather, Philippe de Monet, “sei- eneur de Bazentin et autres lieux,” was also “chevalier de l’ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis, conimand- ant pour le roi en la ville et chateau de Dinan, pen- sionnaire de sa majesté.” The descendants of Philippe de Lamarck were, adds de Cauna, thus thrown into two branches, or at least two offshoots or stems (d7zsures), near Péronne, But the actual posterity of the Monet of Picardy was reduced to a single family, claiming back, with good reason, to a southern origin. One of its scions in the maternal line was a brilliant officer of the military marine and also son-in-law of a very distinguished naval officer. The family of Monet was represented among the French nobility of 1789 by Messires de Monet de Caixon and de Monet de Saint-Martin. By marriage their grandson was connected with an honorable fam- ily of Montant, near Saint-Sever-Cap. Another authority, the Abbé J. Dulac, has thrown additional light on the genealogy of the de Lamarck family, which, it may be seen, was for at least three centuries a military one.* The family of Monet, Seigneur de Saint-Martin et de Sombran, was main- tained as a noble one by order of the Royal Council of State of June 20, 1678. He descended (1) from Bernard de Monet, esquire, captain of the chateau of Lourdes, who had as a son (II) Etienne de Monet, * Revue de Gascogne, pp. 264-269, 1876, BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 9 esquire, who, by contract dated August 15, 1543, married Marguerite de Sacaze. He was the father of (111) Pierre de Monet, esquire, “Seigneur d’Ast, en Béarn, guidon des gendarmes de la compagnie du roi de Navarre.” From him descended (iv) Etienne de Monet, esquire, second of the name, “ Seigneur d’Ast et Lamarque, de Julos.” He was a captain by rank, and bought the estate of Saint-Martin in 1592. He married, in 1612, Jeanne de Lamarque, daughter of William de Lamarck, “Seigneur de Lamarque et de Bretaigne.” They had three children, the third of whom was Philippe, “chevalier de Saint-Louis, com- mandant du chateau de Dinan, Seigneur de Bazen- tin, en Picardy,” who, as we have already seen, was the father of the naturalist Lamarck, who lived from 1744 to 1829. The abbé relates that Philippe, the father of the naturalist, was born at Saint-Martin, in the midst of Bigorre, “zz pleine Bigorre,’ and he very neatly adds that “the Bigorrais have the right to claim for their land of flowers one of the glories of botany.”* * The abbé attempts to answer the question as to what place gave origin to the name of Lamarck, and says: “ The author of the history of Béarn considered the cradle of the race to have been the freehold of Marca, parish of Gou (Basses- Pyrénées). A branch of the family established in le Magnoac changed its name of Marca to that of La Marque.” It was M. d’Ossat who gave rise to this change by addressing his letters to M. de Marca (at the time when he was preceptor of his nephew), sometimes under the name of M. Marca, sometimes 47. Ja ALargua, or of A. dela Marca, but more often still under that of JZ, de la Marque, ‘‘ with the object, no doubt, of making him a Frenchman” (‘‘ dans la vue sans doute de le franciser”). (Vie du Cardinal d’Ossat, tome i., p. 319.) “To recall their origin, the branch of Magnoac to-day write their name Margue-Marca. If the Marca of the historian belongs to Béarn, the Lamarque of the naturalist, an orthographic name in prin- ciple, proceeds from Bigorre, actually chosen (désignée) by Lamareq, 10 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK The name was at first variously spelled de La- marque, de la Marck, or de Lamarck. He himself signed his name, when acting as secretary of the As- sembly of Professors-administrative of the Museum of Natural History during the years of the First Re- public, as plain Lamarck. The inquiry arises how, being the eleventh child, he acquired the title of chevalier, which would natur- ally have become extinct with the death of the oldest son. The Abbé Dulac suggests that the ten older of the children had died, or that by some family arrange- ment he was allowed to add the domanial name to the patronymic one. Certainly he never tarnished the family name, which, had it not been for him, would have remained in obscurity. As to his father’s tastes and disposition, what in- fluence his mother had in shaping his character, his home environment, as the youngest of eleven chil- dren, the nature of his education in infancy and boy- Pontacq, or Lamarque pres Béarn. That the Lamargue of the botanist of the royal cabinet distinguished himself from all the La- marques of Béarn or of Bigorre, which it bears (gw’z/ gise) to this day in the Hautes-Pyrénées, Canton d’Ossun, we have many proofs: Aast at some distance, Bourcat and Couet all near l’Abbaye Laique, etc. The village so determined is called in turn Aarca, La Marque, La- marque ; names predestined to several destinations ; judge then to the mercy of a botanist, Lamarck, La Marck, Delamarque, De La- marck, who shall determine their number? As to the last, I only ex- plain it by a fantasy of the man who would de-Bigorrize himself in order to Germanize himself in the hope, apparently, that at the first utterance of the name people would believe that he was from the outre Rhin rather than from the borders of Gave orof Adour. Con- sequently a hundred times more learned and a hundred times more worthy of a professorship in the Museum, where Monet would seem (entrevait) much less than Lamarque.” It may be added that Béarn was an ancient Province of southern France nearly corresponding to the present Department of Basses- Pyrénées. Its capital was Pau. zogit ‘St AUVANVE ‘MOUVNVWT AO HdVYSOLAV yrs w we df 7) baw DC wy. airy 5 , of | peas 4 snee] ‘ayboea bon cm nom 7 fon gehmax PD Myra creepy? & Apnea 6 afby ~rhiyry 9g ara sathn oy» whoiy % aad yg map nb wn hy15 | seit Es BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 1 hood, there are no sources of information. But several of his brothers entered the army, and the domestic atmosphere was apparently a military one. Philippe de Lamarck, with his large family, had endowed his first-born son so that he could maintain the family name and title, and had found situa- tions for several of the others in the army. Jean Lamarck did not manifest any taste for the cley ical profession. He lived in a martial atmosphere. For centuries his ancestors had borne arms. His eldest brother had been killed in the breach at the siege of Berg-op-Zoom; two others were still in the service, and in the troublous times at the beginning of the war in 1756, a young man of high spirit and courage would naturally not like to relinquish the prospect of renown and promotion. But, yielding to the wishes of his father, he entered as a student at the college of the Jesuits at Amiens.* His father dying in 1760, nothing could induce the incipient abbé, then seventeen years of age, to longer wear his bands. Immediately on returning home he bought himself a wretched horse, for want of means to buy a better one, and, accompanied by a poor lad * We have been unable to ascertain the date when young Lamarck entered the seminary. On making inquiries in June, 1899, at the Jesuits’ Seminary in Amiens, one of the faculty, after consultation with the Father Superior, kindly gave us in writing the following in- formation as to the exact date: ‘‘ The registers of the great seminary were carried away during the French Revolution, and we do not know whither they have been transported, and whether they still exist to- day. Besides, it is very doubtful whether Lamarck resided here, be- cause only ecclesiastics preparing for receiving orders were received in the seminary. Do you not confound the seminary with the ancient college of Rue Poste de Paris, college now destroyed ?” 12 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK of his village, he rode across the country to join the French army, then campaigning in Germany. He carried with him a letter of recommendation from one of his neighbors on an adjoining estate in the country, Madame de Lameth, to M. de Lastic, colonel of the regiment of Beaujolais.* “We can imagine [says Cuvier] the feelings of this officer on thus finding himself hampered with a boy whose puny appearance made him seem still younger than he was. However, he sent him to his quarters, and then busied himself with his duties. The period indeed was a critical one. It was the 16th of July, 1761. The Marshal de Broglie had just united his army with that of the Prince de Soubise, and the next day was to attack the allied army commanded by the Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. At the break of day M. de Lastic rode along the front of his corps, and the first man that met his gaze was the new re- cruit, who, without saying anything to him, had placed himself in the front rank of a company of grenadiers, and nothing could induce him to quit his post. “It is a matter of history that this battle, which bears the name of the little village of Fissingshausen, between Ham and Lippstadt, in Westphalia, was lost by the French, and that the two generals, mutually accusing each other of this defeat, immediately sepa- rated, and abandoned the campaign. “ During the movement of the battle, de Lamarck’s company was stationed in a position exposed to the direct fire of the enemy’s artillery. In the confusion of the retreat he was forgotten. Already all the officers and non-commissioned officers had been * We are following the Eloge of Cuvier almost verbatim, also repro- duced in the bicgraphical notice in the Revue biographigue de la So- cidté Malacologigue de France, said to have been prepared by J. R. Bourguignat. BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 13 killed; there remained only fourteen men, when the oldest grenadier, seeing that there were no more of the French troops in sight, proposed to the young volunteer, become so promptly commander, to with- draw his little troop. ‘But we are assigned to this post,’ said the boy, ‘and we should not withdraw from it until we are relieved” And he made them remain there until the colonel, seeing that the squad did not rally, sent him an orderly, who crept by all sorts of covered ways to reach him. This bold stand having been reported to the marshal, he promoted him on the field to the rank of an officer, although his order had prescribed that he should be very chary of these kinds of promotions.” His physical courage shown at this age was paralleled by his moral courage in later years. The staying power he showed in immovably adhering to his views on evolution through many years, and under the di- rect and raking fire of harsh and unrelenting criticism and ridicule from friend and foe, affords a striking contrast to the moral timidity shown by Buffon when questioned by the Sorbonne. We can see that La- marck was the stuff martyrs are made of, and that ‘had he been tried for heresy he would have been another Tycho Brahe. Soon after, de Lamarck was nominated to a lieuten- ancy; but so glorious a beginning of his military career was most unexpectedly checked. A sudden accident forced him to leave the service and entirely change his course of life. His regiment had been, during peace, sent into garrison, first at Toulon and then at Monaco. While there a comrade in play lifted him by the head; this gave rise to an inflam- 14 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK mation of the lymphatic glands of the neck, which, not receiving the necessary attention on the spot, obliged him to go to Paris for better treatment. “The united efforts [says Cuvier] of several sur- geons met with no better success, and danger had be- come very imminent, when our confrére, the late M. Tenon, with his usual sagacity, recognized the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treat- ment lasted for a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure to devote himself to meditations.” CHAPTER II STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER THE profession of arms had not led Lamarck to forget the principles of physical science which he had received at college. During his sojourn at Monaco the singular vegetation of that rocky country had attracted his attention, and Chomel’s 7razté des Plantes usuelles accidentally falling into his hands had given him some smattering of botany. Lodged at Paris, as he has himself said, in a room much higher up than he could have wished, the clouds, almost the only objects to be seen from his windows, interested him by their ever-changing shapes, and inspired in him his first ideas of meteor- ology. There were not wanting other objects to ex- cite interest in a mind which had always been remark- ably active and original. He then realized, to quote from his biographer, Cuvier, what Voltaire said of Condorcet, that solid enduring discoveries can shed a lustre quite different from that of a commander of a company of infantry. He resolved to study some profession. This last resolution was but little less courageous than the first. Reduced toa pension (pension alimentaire) of only 400 francs a year, he attempted to study medicine, and while waiting until he had the time to give to the necessary studies, he worked in the dreary office of a bank. 16 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a contemplative nature like his, in his hours of work or leisure, in some degree consoled the budding philoso- pher during this period of uncongenial labor, and when he did have an opportunity of communicating his ideas to his friends, of discussing them, of defend- ing them against objection, the hardships of his work- aday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished. Like many another ris- ing genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his long poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome existence. He did not then know that the great Linné, the father of the science he was to illuminate and so greatly to ex- pand, also began life in extreme poverty, and eked out his scanty livelihood by mending over again for his own use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students. (Cuvier.) Bourguin* tells us that Lamarck’s medical course lasted four years, and this period of severe study— for he must have made it such—evidently laid the best possible foundation that Paris could then afford for his after studies. He seems, however, to have wavered in his intentions of making medicine his life work, for he possessed a decided taste for music. His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, though not without difficulty. * Les Grand Naturalists Frangais au Commencement du XIX Sidcle. STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 17 & At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet village * near Paris, and there for a year they studied together science and history. And now happened an event which proved to be the turning point, or rather gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck’s career and decided his vocation in life. In one of their walks they met the philosopher and sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about La- marck’s acquaintance with this genius, for all the de- tails of his life, both in his early and later years, are pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had attended at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, having by good fortune met Rousseau, he probably improved the acquaintance, and, found by Rousseau to be a congenial spifit, he was soon invited to ac- company him in his herborizations. Still more recently Professor Giard + has unearthed from the works of Rousseau the following statement by him regarding species: ‘‘ Est-ce qu’a proprement parler il n’existerait point d’espéces dans la nature, * Was this quiet place in the region just out of Paris possibly near Mont Valerien? He must have been about twenty-two years old when he met Rousseau and began to study botany seriously. His Flore Francaise appeared in 1778, when he was thirty-four years old. Rousseau, at the end of his checkered life, from 1770 to 1778, lived in Paris. He often botanized in the suburbs; and Mr. Morley, in his Rousseau, says that ‘‘one of his greatest delights was to watch Mont Valérien in the sunset” (p. 436). Rousseau died in Paris in 1778. That Rousseau expressed himself vaguely in favor of evolu- tion is stated by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who quotes a ‘‘ Phrase, malheureusement un peuambigué, qui semble montrer, dans se grand érivain, un partisan de plus de la variabilité du type.” (Résumé des Vues sur l’espoce organique, p. ¥8, Paris, 1889.) The passage is quoted in Geoffroy’s Histoire Naturelle Générale des Régnes organiques, ii., ch. 1., p. 271. I have been unable to verify this quotation, _ +Lecon d’ Ouverture du Cours de l’ Evolution des Ltres organisés. Paris, 1888. 2 18 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK mais seulement des individus?’’* In his Descours sur Ll’ Inégalité parmt les Hommes is the following passage, which shows, as Giard says, that Rousseau perfectly understood the influence of the mzdeu and of wants on the organism; and this brilliant writer seems to have been the first to suggest natural selection, though only in the case of man, when he says that the weaker in Sparta were eliminated in order that the superior and stronger of the race might survive and be main- tained. “ Accustomed from infancy to the severity of the weather and the rigors of the seasons, trained to undergo fatigue, and obliged to defend naked and without arms their life and their prey against ferocious beasts, or to escape them by flight, the men acquired an almost invariably robust temperament ; the infants, bringing into the world the strong constitution of their fathers, and strengthening themselves by the same kind of exercise as produced it, have thus ac- quired all the vigor of which the human species is capable. Nature uses them precisely as did the law of Sparta the children of her citizens. She rendered strong and robust those with a good constitution, and destroyed all the others. Our societies differ in this respect, where the state, in rendering the children burdensome to the father, indirectly kills them be- fore birth.”’+ Soon Lamarck abandoned not only a military career, but also music, medicine, and the bank, and devoted himself exclusively to science. He was now twenty-four years old, and, becoming a student of * Dictionnaire des Termes de la Botanique. Art, APHRODITE. + Discours sur Ll’ Origine et les Fondements de Ul Inégalté parmi les Hommes, 1754. STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 19 botany under Bernard de Jussieu, for ten years gave unremitting attention to this science, and especially to a study of the French flora. Cuvier states that the Flore Francaise appeared after “six months of unremitting labor.” However this may be, the results of over nine preceding years of study, gathered together, written, and printed within the brief period of. half a year, was no hasty tour de force, but a well-matured, solid work which for Many years remained a standard one. It brought him immediate fame. It appeared at a fortunate epoch. The example of Rousseau and the general enthusiasm he inspired had made the study of flowers very popular— une science & la mode,” as Cuvier says—even among many ladies and in the world of fashion, so that the new work of Lamarck, though published in three octavo volumes, had a rapid success. The preface was written by Daubenton.* Buffon also took much interest in the work, opposing as it did the artificial system of Linné, for whom he_had; for other reasons, no great degree of affection. He obtained the privilege of having the work published at the royal printing office at the expense of the government, and the total proceeds of the sale of the volumes were given to the author. This elaborate * Since 1742, the keeper and demonstrator of the Cabinet, who shared with Thouin, the chief gardener, the care of the Royal Gar- dens. Daubenton was at that time the leading anatomist of France, and after Buffon’s death he gathered around him all the scientific men who demanded the transformation of the superannuated and incom- plete Jardin du Roi, and perhaps initiated the movement which resulted five years later in the creation of the present Museum of Natural His- tory. (Hamy, l. c., p. 12.) 20 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK work at once placed young Lamarck in the front rank of botanists, and now the first and greatest honor of his life came to him. The young lieutenant, disap- pointed in a military advancement, won his spurs in the field of science. A place in botany had become vacant at the Academy of Sciences, and M. de La- marck having been presented in the second rank (en seconde ligne), the ministry, a thing almost unex- ampled, caused him to be given by the king, in 1779, the preference over M. Descemet, whose name .was presented before his, in the first rank, and who since then, and during a long life, never could recover the place which he unjustly lost.* ‘In a word, the poor officer, so neglected since the peace, obtained at one stroke the good fortune, always very rare, and especially so at that time, of being both the recipient of the favor of the Court and of the public.’ The interest and affection felt for him by Buffon were of advantage to him in another way. Desiring to have his son, whom he had planned to be his suc- cessor as Intendant of the Royal Garden, and who had just finished his studies, enjoy the advantage of travel in foreign lands, Buffon proposed to Lamarck to go with him as a guide and friend; and, not wishing him to appear as a mere teacher, he procured for him, in 1781, a commission as Royal Botanist, charged * De Mortillet (Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, p. 11) states that Lamarck was elected to the Academy at the age of thirty; but as he was born in 1744, and the election took place in 1779, he must have been thirty-five years of age. + Cuvier’s Z£voge, p. viii.; also Revue biographigue de la Société Matacologigue, p. 67. A. de Vaux-Bidon, det. From an old engraving LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 2} with visiting the foreign botanical gardens and museums, and of placing them in communication with those of Paris. His travels extended through portions of the years 1781 and 1782. According to his own statement,* in pursuit of this object he collected not only rare and interesting plants which were wanting in the Royal Garden, but also min- erals and other objects of natural history new to the Museum. He went to Holland, Germany, Hungary, etc., visiting universities, botanical gardens, and mu- seums of natural history. He examined the mines of the Hartz in Hanover, of Freyburg in Saxony, of Chemnitz and of Cremnitz in Hungary, making there numerous observations which he incorporated in his work on physics, and sent collections of ores, minerals, and seeds to Paris. He also made the acquaintance of the botanists Gleditsch at Berlin, Jacquin at Vienna, and Murray at Géttingen. He obtained some idea of the magnificent establishments in these countries devoted to botany, “and which,” he says, “ ours do not yet approach, in spite of all that had been done for them during the last thirty years.” + On his return, as he writes, he devoted all his ener- gies and time to research and to carrying out his great enterprises in botany; as he stated: “Indeed, for the last ten years my works have obliged me to keep in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers.” ¢ * See letters to the Committee of Public Instruction. + Cuvier’s Z/oge, p. viii; also Bourguignat in Revue biog. Soc. Ma- lacologigue, p. 67. . ¢ He received no remuneration for this service. As was afterwards stated in the National Archives, Ztat des personnes attachées au Mu- 22 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK But the favor of Buffon, powerful as his influence was,* together with the aid of the minister, did not avail to give Lamarck a permanent salaried position. Soon after his return from his travels, however, M. d’Angiviller, the successor of Buffon as Intendant of the Royal Garden, who was related to Lamarck’s family, created for him the position of keeper of the herbarium of the Royal Garden, with the paltry salary of 1,000 francs, According to the same Etat, Lamarck had now been attached to the Royal Garden five years. In 1789 he received as salary only 1,000 livres or francs; in I 792 it was raised to the sum of 1,800 livres. séum National a’ Histoire Naturelle a V’epogue du messidor an Il de la Republigue, he ‘‘ sent to this establishment seeds of rare plants, inter- esting minerals, and observations made during his travels in Holland, Germany, and in France. He did not receive any compensation for this service.” * « The illustrious Intendant of the Royal Gardenand Cabinet had concentrated in his hands the most varied and extensive powers. Not only did he hold, like his predecessors, the personnel of the establish- ment entirely at his discretion, but he used the appropriations which were voted to him with a very great independence. Thanks to the universal renown which he had acquired both in science and in litera- ture, Buffon maintained with the men who succeeded one another in office relations which enabled him to do almost anything he liked at the Royal Garden.” His manner to public men, as Condorcet said, was conciliatory and tactful, and to his subordinates he was modest and unpretending. (Professor G. T. Hamy, Les Derniers Jours du Far- din du Rot, etc.,p. 3.) Buffon, after nearly fifty years of service as In- tendant, died April 16, 1788, CHAPTER III LAMARCK’S SHARE IN THE REORGANIZATION OF THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY EVEN in his humble position as keeper of the herbarium, with its pitiable compensation, Lamarck, now an eminent botanist, with a European reputa- tion, was by no means appreciated or secure in his position. He was subjected to many worries, and, already married arid with several children, suffered from a grinding poverty. His friend and supporter, La Billarderie, was a courtier, with much influence at the Tuileries, but as Intendant of the Royal Garden without the least claim to scientific fitness for the position; and in 1790 he was on the point of dis- charging Lamarck.* On the 20th of August the Finance Committee reduced the expenses of the Royal Garden and Cabinet, and, while raising the salary of the professor of botany, to make good the deficiency thus ensuing suppressed the position of keeper of the herbarium, filled by Lamarck. Lamarck, on learning of this, acted promptly, and though in this * Another intended victim of La Billarderie, whose own salary had been at the same time reduced, was Faujas de Saint-Fond, one of the founders of geology. But his useful discoveries in economic geology having brought him distinction, the king had generously pensioned him, and he was retained in office on the printed Zza¢ distributed by the Committee of Finance. (Hamy, I. c., p. 29.) 24 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK cavalier way stricken off from the rolls of the Royal Garden, he at once prepared, printed, and distributed among the members of the National Assembly an energetic claim for restoration to his office.* His defence formed two brochures; in one he gave an account of his life, travels, and works, and in the other he showed that the place which he filled was a pressing necessity, and could not be conveniently or usefully added to that of the professor of botany, who was already overworked. This manly and able plea in his own defence also comprised a broad, comprehensive plan for the organ- ization and development of a great national museum, combining both vast collections and adequate means of public instruction. The paper briefly stated, in courteous language, what he wished to say to public men, in general animated with good intentions, but little versed in the study of the sciences and the knowledge of their application. It praised, in fit terms, the work of the National Assembly, and gave, without too much emphasis, the assurance of an en- tire devotion to the public business. Then in a very clear and comprehensive way were given all the kinds of service which an establishment like the Royal Garden should render to the sciences and arts, and especially to agriculture, medicine, commerce, etc. Museums, galleries, and botanical gardens; public lec- tures and demonstrations in the museum and school * Hamy, |. c., p. 29. This brochure, of which I possess a copy, is a small quarto pamphlet of fifteen pages, signed, on the last page, ‘7. B. Lamarck, ancien Officier au Régiment de Beaujolais, de Ll’ Academie des Sciences de Paris, Botaniste attaché au Cabinet d' His« toire Naturelle du Jardin des Plantes.” REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 25 of botany; an office for giving information, the dis- tribution of seeds, etc.—all the resources already so varied, as well as the facilities for work at the Jardin, passed successively in review before the representa- tives of the country, and the address ended in a modest request to the Assembly that its author be allowed a few days to offer some observations regard- ing the future organization of this great institution. The Assembly, adopting the wise views announced in the manifest which had been presented by the offi- cers of the Jardin and Cabinet, sent the address to the Committee, and gave a month’s time to the petitioners to prepare and present a plan and regula- tions which should establish the organization of their establishment.* It was in 1790 that the decisive step was taken by the officers of the Royal Gardent+ and Cabinet of * Hamy, l.c., p. 31; also Prdces Justificatives, Nos. 11 ef 12, pp. 97-101. The Intendant of the Garden was completely ignored, and his unpopularity and inefficiency led to his resignation. But meanwhile, in his letter to Condorcet, the perpetual Secretary of the Institute of Trance, remonstrating against the proposed suppression by the As- sembly of the place of Intendant, he partially retracted his action against Lamarck, saying that Lamarck’s work, ‘* peat étre utile, mais nest pas absolutement nécessaire.” The Intendant, as Hamy adds, knew well the value of the services rendered by Lamarck at the Royal Garden, and that, as a partial recompense, he had been appointed botanist to the museum. He also equally well knew that the author of the Flore Frangaise was in a most precarious situation and sup- ported on his paltry salary a family of seven persons, as he was al- ready at this time married and had five children. ‘‘ But his own place was in peril, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice the poor savant whom he had himself installed as keeper of the herbarium.” (Hamy, l.c., pp. 34, 35-) . ; +The first idea of the foundation of the Jardin dates from 1626, but the actual carrying out of the conception was in 1635. The first act of installation took place in 1640. Gui de la Brosse, in order to please his high protectors, the first physicians of the king, named his establishment Jardin des Plantes Medicinales. It was renovated by Fagon, who was born in the Jardin, and whose mother was the niece 26 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK Natural History which led to the organization of the present Museum of Natural History as it is to-day. Throughout the proceedings, Lamarck, as at the out- set, took a prominent part, his address having led the Assembly to invite the officers of the double estab- lishment to draw up rules for its government. The officers met together August 23d, and their distrust and hostility against the Intendant were shown by their nomination of Daubenton, the Nestor of the French savants, to the presidency, although La Billarderie, as representing the royal authority, was present at the meeting. At the second meeting (August 24th) he took no part in the proceedings, and absented himself from the third, held on August 27,1790. It will be seen that even while the office of Intendant lasted, that official took no active part in the meetings or in the work of the institution, and from that day to this it has been solely under the management of a director and scientific corps of professors, all of them original investigators as well as teachers. Certainly the most practical and efficient sort of organization for such an establishment.* of Gui de la Brosse. By his disinterestedness, activity, and great scientific capacity, he regenerated the garden, and under his admin- istration flourished the great professors, Duverney, Tournefort, Geof- froy the chemist, and others (Perrier, l. c., p. 59). T’agon was suc- ceed by Buffon, ‘tthe new legislator and second founder.” His Intendancy lasted from 1739 to 1788. * Three days after, August 30th, the report was ready, the discussion. began, and the foundations of the new organization were definitely laid. ‘“No longer any Jardin or Cabinets, buta Museum of Natural His- tory, whose aim was clearly defined. No officers with unequal func- tions; all are professors and all will give instruction. They elect themselves and present to the king @ candidate for each vacant place. Finally, the general administration of the Museum will be confided to the officers of the establishment, this implying the suppression of the Intendancy.” (Hamy, l. c., p. 37.) REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 27 Lamarck, though holding a place subordinate to the other officers, was present, as the records of the proceedings of the officers of the Jardin des Plantes at this meeting show. During the middle of 1791, the Intendant, La Billarderie, after “four years of incapacity,” placed his resignation in the hands of the king. The Min- ister of the Interior, instead of nominating Daubenton as Intendant, reserved the place for a protégé, and, July 1, 1791, sent in the name of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the distinguished author of Paul et Virginie and of Etudes sur la Nature. The new Intendant was literary in his tastes, fond of nature, but not a practical naturalist. M. Hamy wittily states that “Bernardin Saint-Pierre contem- plated and dreamed, and in his solitary meditations had imagined a system of the world which had nothing in common with that which was to be seen in the Faubourg Saint Victor, and one can readily imagine the welcome that the officers of the Jardin gave to the singular naturalist the Tuileries had sent them.”* Lamarck suffered an indignity from the inter- meddling of this second Intendant of the Jardin. In his budget of expensest sent to the Minister of *Hamy, 1. c., p. 37. The Faubourg Saint Victor was a part of the Quartier Latin, and included the Jardin des Plantes. . + Devis de la Dépense du Jardin National des Plantes et du Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle pour I’ Année 1793, presented to the National Con- vention by Citoyen Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In it appeared a note relative to Lamarck, which, after stating that, though full of zeal and of knowledge of botany, his time was not entirely occupied ; that for two months he had written him in regard to the duties of his posi- tion ; referred to the statements of two of his seniors, who repeated the old gossip as to the claim of La Billarderie that his place was useless, 28 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion to refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering way, which may have both amused and disgusted him. But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing to a close, and a new era in French natural science, signalized by the reorganization of the Jardin and Cabinet under the name of the Muséum d’ Histoire Naturelle, was dawning. On the 6th of February, 1793, the National Convention, at the request of Lakanal,* ordered the Committees of Public Instruc- and also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system of Linnd in the arrangement of the herbarium, added: ‘‘ However, desirous of retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the posi- tion which he needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after several conversations with the older officers of the Jardin, I have believed that, M. Desfontaines being charged with the botanical lectures in the school, and M. Jussieu in the neighborhood of Paris, it would be well to send M. La Marck to herborize in some parts of the kingdom, in order to complete the French flora, as this will be to his taste, and at the same time very useful to the progress of botany; thus everybody will be employed and satisfied.”—Perrier, Lamarck et le Transform- isme Actuel, pp. 13,14. (Copied from the National Archives.) ‘‘ The life of Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as irregular as that of his friend and master [Rousseau]. But his character was essentially crafty and selfish, like that of many other sentimentalists , of the first order.” (Morley’s Rousseau, p. 437, footnote.) * Joseph Lakanal was born in 1762, and died in 1845. He was a professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative (député) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving from a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for the death of Louis XVI. Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Insti- tute, what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with designating the first forty-eight members, who should elect all the others. Ie was by the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as a regicide at the second restoration, he sailed for the United States, where he was warmly welcomed by Jefferson. The United States REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 29 tion and of Finances to at once make a report on the new organization of the administration of the Jardin des Plantes. Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired into the condition and needs of the establishment ; Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure of 1790, written by Lamarck. The next day Lakanal, after a short conference with his colleagues of the Committee of Public Instruction, read in the tribune a short report and a decree which the Committee adopted without discussion. Their minds were elsewhere, for grave news had come in from all quarters. The Austrians were bombarding Valenciennes, the Prussians had invested Mayence, the Spanish were menacing Perpignan, and bands of Vendeans had seized Saumur after a bloody battle; while at Caen, at Evreux, at Bordeaux, at Marseilles, and elsewhere, muttered the thunders of the outbreaks provoked by the proscription of the Girondins. So that under these alarming conditions Congress voted him five hundred acres of land. The government of Louisiana offered him the presidency of its university, which, however, he did not accept. In 1825 he went to live on the shores of Mobile Bay on land which he purchased from the proceeds of the sale of the land given him by Congress. Here he became a pioneer and planter. In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and offered his services to the new government, but received no answer and was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the ini- tiative of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reélection to the French Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. He lived in retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his death in 1845 in writing a book entitled Sour d’un Membre de Linstitut de France aux Etats-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans. The manuscript mysteriously disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universel, Art. LAKANAL.) His bust now occupies a prominent place among those of other great men in the French Academy of Sciences. 30 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK the decree of the 1oth of June, in spite of its im- portance to science and higher learning in France, was passed without discussion. In his Lamarck De Mortillet states explicitly that Lamarck, in his address of 1790, changed the name of the Jardin du Roi to Jardin des Plantes.* As the article states, “‘ Entirely devoted to his studies, Lamarck entered into no intrigue under the falling monarchy, so he always remained in a position strait- ened and inferior to his merits.” It was owing to this and his retired mode of life that the single. minded student of nature was not disturbed in his studies and meditations by the Revolution. And when the name of the Jardin du Roi threatened to be fatal to this establishment, it was he who presented a memoir to transform it, under the name of Jardin des Plantes, into an institution of higher instruction, with six professors, In 1793, Lakanal adopted La- marck’s plan, and, enlarging upon it, created twelve chairs for the teaching of the natural sciences. Bourguin thus puts the matter: “In June, 1793, Lakanal, having learned that ‘the Vandals’ (that is his expression) had demanded of the tribune of the Convention the suppression of the Royal Garden, as being an annex of the king’s palace, recurred to the memoirs of Lamarck presented in 1790 and gave his plan of organization. He inspired himself with La- marck’s ideas, but enlarged upon them. Instead of six positions of professors-administrative, which La- * This is seen to be the case by the title of the pamphlet: Afémoire sur les Cabinets d'Histoire Naturelle, et particuliirement sur celui du Jardin des Plantes. REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 31 marck asked for, Lakanal established twelve chairs for the teaching of different branches of natural “science.” * * Bourguin also adds that ‘‘ on one point Lamarck, with more fore- sight, went farther than Lakanal. He had insisted on the necessity of the appointment of four demonstrators for zoblogy. In the decree of June 10, 1793, they were even reduced to two. Afterwards they saw that this number was insufficient, and to-day (1863) the depart- ment of zodlogy is administered at the museum by four professors, in conformity with the division indicated by Lamarck.” CHAPTER IV PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY AT THE MUSEUM LAMARCK'S career as a botanist comprised about twenty-five years. We now come to the third stage of his life—Lamarck the zoélogist and evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year when he assumed the duties of his professorship of the zodlogy of the in- vertebrate animals; and at a period when many men desire rest and freedom from responsibility, with the vigor of an intellectual giant Lamarck took upon his shoulders new labors in an untrodden field both in pure science and philosophic thought. It was now the summer of 1793, and on the eve of the Reign of Terror, when Paris, from early in Octo- ber until the end of the year, was in the deadliest throes of revolution. The dull thud of the guillotine, placed in front of the Tuileries, in the Place de la Revolution, which is now the Place de la Concorde, a little to the east of where the obelisk of Luxor now stands, could almost be heard by the quiet workers in the Museum, for sansculottism in its most aggres- sive and hideous forms raged not far from the Jardin des Plantes, then just on the border of the densest part of the Paris of the first Revolution. Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry, was guillotined some months later. The Abbé Haiiy, the founder of PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 33 crystallography, had been, the year previous, rescued from prison by young Geoffroy St. Hilaire, his neck being barely saved from the gleaming axe. Roland, the friend of science and letters, had been so hunted down that at Rouen, in a moment of despair, on hear- ing of his wife’s death, he thrust his sword-cane through his heart. Madame Roland had been be- headed, as also a cousin of her husband, and we can well imagine that these fateful summer and autumn days were scarcely favorable to scientific enterprises.* Still, however, amid the loud alarums of this social tempest, the Museum underwent a new birth which proved neWto be untimely. The Minister of the In- terior (Garat) invited the professors of the Museum to constitute an assembly to nominate a director and a treasurer, and he begged them to present extracts of their deliberations for him to send to the execu- tive council, “under the sepervision of which the * Most men of science of the Revolution, like Monge and others, were advanced republicans, and the Chevalier Lamarck, though of noble birth, was perhaps not without sympathy with the ideas which led to the establishment of the republic. It is possible that in his walks and intercourse with Rousseau he may have been inspired with the new notions of liberty and equality first promulgated by that philosopher. e His studies and meditations were probably not interrupted by the events of the Terror, Stevens, in his history of the French Revolu- tion, tells us that Paris was never gayer than in the summer of 1793, and that during the Reign of Terror the restaurants, cafés, and the- atres were always full. There were never more theatres open at the same period than then, though no single great play or opera was produced. Meanwhile the great painter David at this time built up a school of art and made that city a centre for art students. Indeed the Revolution was ‘‘a grand time for enthusiastic young men,” while people in general lived their ordinary lives. There is little doubt, then, that the savants, except the few who were occupied by their duties as members of the Convention Nationale, worked away quietly at their specialties, each in his own study or laboratory or lecture- room. 34 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK National Museum is for the future placed ;” though in general the assembly only reported to the Minister matters relating to the expenses, the first annual grant of the Museum being 100,000 livres. Four days after, June 14th, the assembly met and adopted the name of the establishment in the follow- ‘ing terms: MWus¢um d'Histoire Naturelle décrété par la Convention Nationale le 10 Juin, 1793; and at a meeting held on the oth of July the assembly defi- nitely organized the first bureau, with Daubenton as director, Thouin treasurer, and Desfontaines sec- retary. Lamarck, as the records show, was present at all these meetings, and at the first ongg#une 14th, Lamarck and Fourcroy were designated as commis- sioners for the formation of the Museum library. All this was done without the aid or presence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the Intendant. The Min- ister of the Interior, meanwhile, had communicated to him the decision of the National Convention, and invited him to continue his duties up to the moment when the new organization should be established. After remaining in his office until July oth, he retired from the Museum 1 August 7th following, and finally withdrew to the country at Essones., The organization of the Museum is the same now as in 1793, having for over a century been the chief biological centre of France, and with its magnificent collections was never more useful in the advancement of science than at this moment. Let us now look at the composition of the assémbly of professors, which formed the Board of Administra- tion of the Museum at the time of his appointment. PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 35 The associates of Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who had already been connected with the Royal Gar- den and Cabinet, were Daubenton, Thouin, Desfon- taine, Portal, and Mertrude. The Nestor of the faculty was Daubenton, who was born in 1716. He was the collaborator of Buffon in the first part of his Ltstoire Naturelle, and the author of treatises on the mammals and of papers on the bats and other mammals, also on reptiles, together with embryologi- cal and anatomical essays. Thouin, the professor of horticulture, was the veteran gardener and architect of the Jardin des Plantes, and withal a most useful man. He was affable, modest, genial, greatly be- loved by his students, a man of high character, and possessing much executive ability. A street near the Jardin was named after him. He was succeeded by Bosc. Desfontaine had the chair of botany, but his attainments as a botanist were mediocre, and his lec- tures were said to have been tame and uninteresting. Portal taught human anatomy, while Mertrude lec- tured on vertebrate anatomy; his chair was filled by Cuvier in 1795. Of this group Lamarck was facile princeps, as he combined great sagacity and experience as a system- atist with rare intellectual and philosophic traits. For this reason his fame has perhaps outlasted that of his young contemporary, Geoffroy St. Hilaire. The necessities of the Museum led to the division of the chair of zodlogy, botany being taught by Des- fontaine. And now began a new era in the life of Lamarck. After twenty-five years spent in botanical research he was compelled, as there seemed nothing 36 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK else for him to undertake, to assume charge of the collection of. invertebrate animals, and to him was assigned that enormous, chaotic mass of forms then known as molluscs, insects, worms, and microscopic animals. Had he continued to teach botany, we might never have had the Lamarck of biology and biological philosophy. But turned adrift in a world almost unexplored, he faced the task with his old- time bravery and dogged persistence, and at once showed the skill of a master mind in systematic work, The two new professorships in zoélogy were filled, one by Lamarck, previously known as a botanist, and the other by the young Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, then twenty-two years old, who was at that time a student of Haiiy, and in charge of the minerals, be- sides teaching mineralogy with especial reference to crystallography. To Geoffroy was assigned the four classes of verte- brates, but in reality he only occupied himself with the mammals and birds. Afterwards Lacépéde * took charge of the reptiles and fishes. On the other hand, Lamarck’s field comprised more than nine-tenths of the animal kingdom. Already the collections of in- sects, crustacea, worms, molluscs, echinoderms, corals, etc., at the Museum were enormous. At this time * Bern. Germ. Etienne, Comte de Lacépéde, born in 1756, died in 1825, was elected professor of the zodlogy of ‘‘ quadrupedes ovi- pares, reptiles, et poissons,” January 12, 1795 (Records of the Museum). He was the author of works on amphibia, reptiles, and mammals, forming continuations of Buffon’s Aistoive Naturelle. He also published Azstoire Naturelle des Potssons (1798-1803), Histoire des Cétacés (1804), and Histoire Naturelle de l’ Homme (1827), Les Ages de la Nature et Histoire de l’Espice Humaine, tome 2, 1830. PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 37 France began to send out those exploring expedi- tions to all parts of the globe which were so numerous and fruitful during the first third of the nineteenth century. The task of arranging and classifying single- handed this enormous mass of material was enotigh to make a young man quail, and it is a proof of the vigor, innate ability, and breadth of view of the man that in this pioneer work he not only reduced to some order this vast horde of forms, but showed such insight and brought about such radical reforms in zoélogical classification, especially in the foundation and limitation of certain classes, an insight no one before him had evinced. To him and to Latreille much of the value of the Régne Animal of Cuvier, as regards invertebrate classes, is due. The exact title of the chair held by Lamarck is given in the Evat of persons attached to the National Museum of Natural History at the date of the Ier messidor, an II. of the Republic (1794), where he is mentioned as follows: “ LAMARCK—fifty years old; married for the second time; wife exceznte,; six chil- dren; professor of zodlogy, of insects, of worms, and microscopic animals.” His salary, like that of the other professors, was put at 2,868 livres, 6 sous, 8 deniers.* Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire + has related how the professorship was given to Lamarck. “ The law of 1793 had prescribed that all parts of the natural sciences should be equally taught. The insects, shells, and an infinity of organisms—a portion * Perrier, I. c., p. 14. + Fragments Biographiques, p. 214. 38 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK of creation still almost unknown—remained to be treated in such a course. A desire to comply with the wishes of his colleagues, members of the admin- istration, and without doubt, also, the consciousness of his powers as an investigator, determined M. de Lamarck: this task, so great, and which would tend to lead him into numberless researches; this friendless, unthankful task he accepted—courageous resolution, which has resulted in giving us immense undertakings and great and important works, among which posterity will distinguish and honor forever the work which, entirely finished and collected into seven volumes, is known under the name of Antmaux sans Vertebres.” Before his appointment to this chair Lamarck had devoted considerable attention to the study of conch- ology, and already possessed a rather large collection of shells. His last botanical paper appeared in 1800, but practically his botanical studies were over by 1793. During the early years of the Revolution, namely, from 1789 to and including 1791, Lamarck published nothing. Whether this was naturally due to the social convulsions and turmoil which raged around the Jardin des Plantes, or to other causes, is not known. In 1792, however, Lamarck and his friends and col- leagues, Bruguiére, Olivier, and the Abbé Haiiy, founded the Journal d’Histotre Naturelle, which contains nineteen botanical articles, two on shells, besides one on physics, by Lamarck. These, with many articles by other men of science, illustrated by plates, indicate that during the years of social unrest and upheaval in Paris, and though France was also PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 39 engaged in foreign wars, the philosophers preserved in some degree, at least, the traditional calm of their pro- fession, and passed their days and nights in absorption in matters biological and physical. In 1801 appeared his Systeme des Animaux sans Vertibres, preceded by the opening discourse of his lectures on the lower animals, in which his views on the origin of species were first propounded. During the years 1793-1708, or for a period of six years, he published nothing on zoélogy, and during this time only one paper appeared, in 1798, on the influence of the moon on the earth’s atmosphere. But as his memoirs on fire and on sound were published in 1798, it is evident that his leisure hours during this period, when not engaged in museum work and the preparation of his lectures, were devoted to meditations on physical and meteorological subjects, and most probably it was towards the end of this period that he brooded over and conceived his views on organic evolution. It appears that he was led, in the first place, to conchological studies through his warm friendship for a fellow naturalist, and this is one of many proofs of his affectionate, generous nature. The touching story is told by Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire.* “It was impossible to assign him a professorship of botany. M. de Lamarck, then forty-nine years old, accepted this change in his scientific studies to take charge of that which everybody had neglected; be- cause it was, indeed, a heavy load, this branch of natural history, where, with so varied relations, every- * Fragments Biographiques, p. 213. 40 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK thing was to be created. On one group he was a little prepared, but it was by accident ; a self-sacrifice ta friendship was the cause. For it was both to please his friend Bruguiétre as well as to penetrate more deeply into the affections of this very reserved naturalist, and also to converse with him in the only language which he wished to hear, which was restricted to conversations on shells, that M. de Lamarck had made some conchological studies. Oh, how, in 1793, did he regret that his friend had gone to Persia! He had wished, he had planned, that he should take the professorship which it was proposed to create. He would at least supply his place; it was in answer to the yearnings of his soul, and this affectionate impulse became a fundamental element in the nature of one of the greatest of zoélogical geniuses of our epoch.” Once settled in his new line of work, Lamarck, the incipient zodlogist, at a period in life when many students of less flexible and energetic natures become either hide-bound and conservative, averse to taking up a different course of study, or actually cease all work and rust out—after a half century of his life had passed, this rare spirit, burning with enthusiasm, charged like some old-time knight or explorer into a new realm and into ‘fresh fields and pastures new.” His spirit, still young and fresh after’ nearly thirty years of mental toil, so unrequited in material things, felt a new stimulus as he began to investigate the lower animals, so promising a field for discovery. He said himself : _ “That which is the more singular is that the most important phenomena to be considered have been offered to our meditations only since the time when } < . PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 41 attention has been paid to the animals least perfect, and when researches on the different complications of the organization of these animals have become the singular to realize that it was almost always from the principal foundation of their study. It is not th | examination of the smallest objects which nature us the most minute, that we have obtained the most important knowledge to enable us to arrive at the dis- covery of her laws, and to determine her course.” presents to us,and that of considerations which seem = After a year of preparation he opened his course at the Museum in the spring of 1794. In his intro- ductory lecture, given in 1803, after ten years of work on the lower animals, he addressed his class in these words: “Indeed it is among those animals which are the most multiplied and numerous in nature, and the most ready to regenerate themselves, that we should seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course of nature, and on the means she has employed in the creation of herinnumerable productions. In this case we perceive that, relatively to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the inverte- brate animalsfbecause their enormous multiplicity in nature, the singular diversity of their systems of or- _ganization and of their means of multiplication, their \ i increasing simplification, and the extreme fugacity of |/ those which compose the lowest orders of these animals, show us, much better than the higher animals, the true course of nature, and the means /| which she has used and which she still unceasingly employs to give existence to all the living bodies of , which we have knowledge.” c During this decade (1793-1803) and the one suc- ceeding, Lamarck’s mind grew and expanded. Be- | 42 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK fore 1801, however much he may have brooded over the matter, we have no utterances in print on the transformation theory. His studies on the lower animals, and his general knowledge of the vertebrates derived from the work of his contemporaries and his observations in the Museum and menagerie, gave him a broad grasp of the entire animal kingdom, such as no one before him had. As the result, his compre- hensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, enabled him to appreciate the series from monad (his ébauche) to man, the range of forms from the simple to the complex. Even though not a comparative anatomist like Cuvier, he made use of the latter’s discoveries, and could understand and appreciate the gradually increasing complexity of forms; and, unlike Cuvier, realize that they were blood relations, and not separate, piece-meal creations. Animal life, so immeasurably higher than vegetable forms, with its highly complex physiological functions and varied means of reproduction, and the relations of its forms to each other and to the world around, affords facts for evolution which were novel to Lamarck, the descriptive botanist. In accordance with the rules of the Museum, which required that all the professors should be lodged within the limits of the Jardin, the choice of lodgings being given to the oldest professors, Lamarck, at the time of his appointment, took up his abode in the house now known as the Maison de Buffon, situated on the opposite side of the Jardin des Plantes from the house afterwards inhabited by Cuvier, and in the angle between the Galerie de Zoologie andthe Museum From a photograph by the author. BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW, FROM THE WEST From a photograph by F. E. P., 1899. MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS, 1793-1829 PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 43 library.* With little doubt the windows of his study, where his earlier addresses, the Recherches sur I’ Or- ganization des Corps Vivans, and the Philosophie Zo- ologique, were probably written, looked out upon what is now the court on the westerly side of the house, that facing the Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire. At the time of his entering on his duties as pro- fessor of zodlogy, Lamarck was in his fiftieth year. He had married twice and was the father of six children, and without fortune. He married for a third, and afterwards for a fourth time, and in a) *A few years ago, when we formed the plan of writing his life, we wrote to friends in Paris for information as to the exact house in which Lamarck lived, and received the answer that it was unknown; another proof of the neglect and forgetfulness that had followed Lamarck so many years after his death, and which was even mani- fested before he died. Afterwards Professor Giard kindly wrote that by reference to the proces verbaux of the Assembly, it had been found by Professor Hamy that he had lived in the house of Buffon. The house is situated at the corner of Rue de Buffon and Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire. The courtyard facing Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire bears the number 2 Rue de Buffon, and is in the angle between the Galerie de Zoologie and the Bibliothéque. ‘he edifice is a large four- storied one. Lamarck occupied the second ¢tage, what we should call the third story; it was first occupied by Buffon. His bedroom, where he died, was on the premier ¢tage. It was tenanted by De Quatrefages in his time, and is at present occupied by Professor G. T. Hamy; Professor L. Vaillant living in the first efage, or second story, and Dr. J. Deniker, the ddHothécaire and learned anthro- pologist, in the third. The second ¢fage was, about fifty years ago (1840-50), renovated forthe use of ‘remy the chemist, so that the exact room occupied by Lamarck as a study cannot be identified. This ancient house was originally called Za Croix de Fer, and was built about two centuries before the foundation of the Jardin du Roi. It appears from an inspection of the notes on the titles and copies of the original deeds, preserved in the Archives, and kindly shown me by Professor G. T. Hamy, the Archivist of the Museum, that this house was erected in 1468, the deed being dated 1xdre, 1468. The house is referred to as maison ditte La Croix de Fer in deeds of 1684, 1755, and 1768. It was sold by Charles Rogerto M. le Compte de Buffon, March 23, 1771. One of the old gardens over- looked by it was called de Jardin de la Croix, It was originally the first structure erected on the south side of the Jardin du Roi. 44 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK seven children were born to him, as in the year (1794) the minute referring to his request for an indem- nity states: “Il est chargé de sept enfans dont un est sur les vaisseaux de la République.’’ Another son was an artist, as shown by the records of the Assembly of the Museum for September 23, 1814, when he asked for a chamber in the lodgings of Thouin, for the use of his son, “ pezntre.” Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in 1829, spoke of one of his sons, M. Auguste de Lamarck, asa skilful and highly esteemed engineer of Ponts-et-Chaussées, then advan- tageously situated. But man cannot live by scientific researches and philosophic meditations alone. The history of La- marck’s life is painful from beginning to end. With his large family and slender salary he was never free from carking cares and want. On the 30 fructidor, an II. of the Republic, the National Convention voted the sum of 300,000 livres, with which an indemnity was to be paid to citizens eminent in literature and art. Lamarck had sacrificed much time and doubt- less some money in the preparation and publication of his works, and he felt that he had a just claim to be placed on the list of those who had been useful to the Republic, and at the same time could give proof of their good citizenship, and of their right to receive such indemnity or appropriation. Accordingly, in 1795 he sent in a letter, which pos- sesses much autobiographical interest, to the Com- mittee of Public Instruction, in which he says: “ During the twenty-six years that he has lived in Paris the citizen Lamarck has unceasingly devoted PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 4s himself to the study of natural history, and particu- larly botany. He has done it successfully, for it is fifteen years since he published under the title of Flore Francaise the history and description of the plants of France, with the mention of their proper- ties and of their usefulness in the arts; a work printed at the expense of the government, well received by the public, and which now is much sought after and very rare.” He then describes his second great bo- tanical undertaking, the Encyclopedia and Illustra- tion of Genera, with nine hundred plates. He states that for ten years past he has kept busy “a great number of Parisian artists, three printing presses for different works, besides delivering a course of lec- tures.” The petition was granted. At about this period a pension of twelve hundred francs from the Academy of Sciences, and which had increased to three thou- sand francs, had ceased eighteen months previously to be paid to him. But at the time (an II.) Lamarck was “chargé de sept enfans,’”’ and this appropriation was a most welcome addition to his small salary. The next year (an III.) he again applied for a simi- lar allowance from the funds providing an indemnity for men of letters and artists “ whose talents are use- ful to the Republic.” Again referring to the Flore Francaise, and his desire to prepare a second edition of it, and his other works and travels in the interest of botanical science, he says: “If I had been less overburdened by needs of all kinds for some years, and especially since the sup- pression of my pension from the aforesaid Academy of Sciences, I should prepare the second edition of this useful work; and this would be, without doubt, 46 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK indeed, the opportunity of making a new present to my country. “Since my return to France I have worked on the completion of my great botanical enterprises, and in- deed for about ten years past my works have obliged me to keep in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers. But these important works that I have begun, and have in a well-advanced state, have been in spite of all my efforts suspended and practically abandoned for the last ten years. The loss of my pension from the Academy of Sciences and the enormous increase in the price of articles of subsistence have placed me, with my numerous family, in a state of distress which leaves me neither the time nor the freedom from care to cultivate science in a fruitful way.” Lamarck’s collection of shells, the accumulation of nearly thirty years,* was purchased by the govern- ment at the price of five thousand livres. This sum was used by him to balance the price of a national estate for which he had contracted by virtue of the law of 28 ventose de l’an IV.+ This little estate, which was the old domain of Beauregard, was a modest farm-house or country-house at Héricourt- * In the ‘‘ avertissement ” to his Systdme des Animaux sans Ver- #bres (1801), after stating that he had at his disposition the magnifi- cent collection of invertebrate animals é6f the museum, he refers to his private collection as follows: ‘‘Et une autre assez riche que j'ai formée moi-méme par prés de trente années de recherches,” p. vii. Afterwards he formed another collection of shells named according to his system, and containing a part of the types described in his LHistoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Verteébres and in his minor arti- cles. This collection the government did not acquire, and it is now in the museum at Geneva. ‘The Paris museum, however, possesses a ao en of the Lamarckian types, which are on exhibition (Perrier, .., P. 20). + Lettre du Ministre des Finances (de Ramel) au Ministre de [ In- térieur (13 pr. an V.). See Perrier, I. c., p. 20. PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 47 Saint-Samson, in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, not far to the northward of Beauvais, and about fifty miles from Paris. It is probable that as a proprictor of a landed property he passed the summer season, or a part of it, on this estate. This request was, we may believe, made from no unworthy or mercenary motive, but because he thought that such an indemnity was his due. Some years after (in 1809) the chair of zodlogy, newly formed by the Faculté des Sciences in Paris, was offered to him. Desirable as the salary would have been in his straitened circumstances, he modestly re- fused the offer, because he felt unable at that time of life (he was, however, but sixty-five years of age) to make the studies required worthily to occupy the position. One of Lamarck’s projects, which he was never able to carry out, for it was even then quite beyond the powers of any man single-handed to undertake, was his Systeme de la Nature. We will let him describe it in his own words, especially since the account is some- what autobiographical. It is the second memoir he addressed to the Committee of Public Instruction of the National Convention, dated 4 vendémiaire, l’an III. (1795): “In my first memoir I have given you an account of the works which I have published and of those which I have undertaken to contribute to the progress of natu- ral history; also of the travels and researches which I have made. “ But for a long time I have had in view a very im- portant work—perhaps better adapted for education 48 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK in France than those I have already composed or un- dertaken—a work, in short, which the National Con- vention should without doubt order, and of which no part could be written so advantageously as in Paris, where are to be found abundant means for carrying it to completion. “This is a Systéme de la Nature, a work analogous to the Systema nature of Linnzus, but written in French, and presenting the picture complete, con- cise, and methodical, of all the natural productions observed up to this day. This important work (of Linneus), which the young Frenchmen who intend to devote themselves to the study of natural history always require, is the object of speculations by foreign authors, and has already passed through thirteen dif- ferent editions. Moreover, their works, which, to our shame, we have to use, because we have none written expressly for us, are filled (especially the last edition edited by Gmelin) with gross mistakes, omissions of double and triple occurrence, and errors in synonymy, and present many generic characters which are inex- act or imperceptible and many series badly divided, or genera too numerous in species, and difficulties in- surmountable to students. “If the Committee of Public Instruction had the time to devote any attention to the importance of my project, to the utility of publishing such a work, and perhaps to the duty prescribed by the national honor, I would say to it that, after having for a long time reflected and meditated and determined upon the most feasible plan, finally after having seen amassed and prepared the most essential materials, I offer to put this beautiful project into execution. I have not lost sight of the difficulties of this great en- terprise. I am, I believe, as well aware of them, and better, than any one else; but I feel that I can over- come them without descending to a simple and dis- honorable compilation of what foreigners have writ- PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 49 ten on the subject. I have some strength left to sacrifice for the common advantage; I have had some experience and practice in writing works of this kind; my herbarium is one of the richest in existence; my numerous collection of shells is almost the only one in France the specimens of which are determined and named according to the method adopted by modern naturalists—finally, I am in a position to profit by all the aid which is to be found in the National Museum of Natural History. With these means brought to- gether, I can then hope to prepare in a suitable man- ner this interesting work. “JT had at first thought that the work should be executed by a society of naturalists; but after having given this idea much thought, and having already the example of the new encyclopedia, I am convinced that in such a case the work would be very defective in arrangement, without unity or plan, without any harmony of principles, and that its composition might be interminable. “Written with the greatest possible conciseness, © this work could not be comprised in less than eight volumes in 8vo, namely: One volume for the quad- rupeds and birds; one volume for the reptiles and fishes; two volumes for the insects; one volume for the worms (the molluscs, madrepores, lithophytes, and naked worms); two volumes for the plants; one volume for the minerals: eight volumes in all. “Tt is impossible to prepare in France a work of this nature without having special aid from the na- tion, because the expense of printing (on account of the enormous quantity of citations and figures which it would contain) would be such that any arrange- ment with the printer or the manager of the edition could not remunerate the author for writing such an | immense work. “Tf the nation should wish to print the work at its own expense, and then give to the author the profits 4 50 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK of the sale of this edition, the author would be very much pleased, and would doubtless not expect any further aid. But it would cost the nation a great deal, and I believe that this useful project could be carried through with greater economy. “ Indeed, if the nation will give me twenty thousand francs, in a single payment, I will take the whole re- sponsibility, and I agree, if I live, that before the expiration of seven years the Systeme de la Nature in French, with the complemental addition, the correc- tions, and the convenient explanations, shall be at the disposition of all those who love or study natural history.” CHAPTER V LAST DAYS AND DEATH LAMARCK’S life was saddened and embittered by the loss of four wives, and the pangs of losing three of his children; * also by the rigid economy he had to practise and the unending poverty of his whole existence. A very heavy blow to him and to science was the loss, at an advanced age, of his eyesight. It was, apparently, not a sudden attack of blind- ness, for we have hints that at times he had to call in Latreille and others to aid him in the study of the insects. The continuous use of the magnifying lens and the microscope, probably, was the cause of en- feebled eyesight, resulting in complete loss of vision. Duval ¢ states that he passed the last ten years of his life in darkness; that his loss of sight gradually came on until he became completely blind. *T have been unable to ascertain the names of any of his wives, or of his children, except his daughter, Cornelie. ia Liexamen minutieux de petits animaux, analyses 4 l'aide d’in- struments grossissants, fatigua, puis affaiblait, sa vue. Bientét il fut complétement aveugle. Il passa les dix derniérs années de sa vie plongé dans les ténébres, entouré des soins de ses deux filles, 4 l'une desquelles il dictait le dernier volume de son Histoire des Animaux sans Vertebres.’-—Le Transformiste Lamarck, Bull, Soc. Anthro- pologie, xii., 1889, p. 341. Cuvier, also, in his history of the progress of natural science for 1819, remarks: ‘‘M. de La Marck, malgré l’affoiblissement total de sa vue, poursuit avec un courage inaltérable la continuation de son grand ouvrage sur les animaux sans vertébres”’ (p. 406). 52 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK In the reports of the meetings of the Board of Professors there is but one reference to his blind- ness. Previous to this we find that, at his last ap- pearance at these sessions—z.¢., April 19, 1825——since his condition did not permit him to give his course of lectures, he had asked M. Latreille to fill his place ; but such was the latter’s health, he proposed that M. Audouin, sub-librarian of the French Institute, should lecture in his stead, on the invertebrate ani- mals. This was agreed to. The next reference, and the only explicit one, is that in the records for May 23, 1826, as follows: “Vu la cécité dont M. de Lamarck est frappé, M. Bosc * continuera d’exercer sur les parties confiert a M. Audouin la surveillance attribuée au Professeur.” But, according to Duval, long before this he had been unable to use his eyes. In his Systeme analy- tique des Connoissances positives de l’ Homme, published in 1820, he refers to the sudden loss of his eyesight. * Louis Auguste Guillaume Bosc, born in Paris, 1759; died in 1828. Author of now unimportant works, entitled: Aistoire Naturelle des Coguilles (1801); Hist. Nat. des Vers (1802); Hist. Nat. des Crus- tacés (1828), and papers on insects and plants. He was associ- ated with Lamarck in the publication of the Journal d’ Histoire Naturelle, During the Reign of Terror in 1793 he was a friend of Madame Roland, was arrested, but afterwards set free and placed first on the Directory in 1795. In 1798 he sailed for Charleston, S.C. Nominated successively vice-consul at Wilmington and consul at New York, but not obtaining his exequatur from President Adams, he went to live with the botanist Michaux in Carolina in his botamgcal garden, where he devoted himself to natural history until the quarrel in 1800 between the United States and l'rance caused him to return to France. On his return he sent North American insects to his friends Fabricius and Olivier, fishes to Lacépéde, birds to Daudin. reptiles to Latreille. Not giving all his time to public life, he devoted himself to natural history, horticulture, and agriculture, succeeding Thouin in the chair of horticulture, where he was most usefully em- ployed until his death.—(Cuvier's Zvoge.) LAST DAYS AND DEATH 53 Even in advanced life Lamarck seems not to have suffered from ill-health, despite the fact that he ap- parently during the last thirty years of his life lived in a very secluded way. Whether he went out into the world, to the theatre, or even went away from Paris and the Museum into the country in his later years, isa matter of doubt. It is said that he was fond of novels, his daughters reading to him those of the best French authors. After looking with some care through the records of the sessions of the Assembly of Profes- sors, we are struck with the evidences of his devotion to routine museum work and to his courses of lectures. At that time the Museum sent out to the &coles centrales of the different departments of France named collections made up from the duplicates, and in this sort of drudgery Lamarck took an active part. He also took a prominent share in the business of the Museum, in the exchange and in the purchase of specimens and collections in his department, and even in the management of the menagerie. Thus he re- ported on the dentition of the young lions (one dying from teething), on the illness and recovery of one of the elephants, on the generations of goats and kids in the park; also on a small-sized bull born of a small cow covered by a Scottish bull, the young animal having, as he states, all the characters of the original. For one year (1794) he was secretary of the Board of Professors of the Museum.* The records of the * The first director of the Board or Assembly of Professors-admin- istrative of the Museum was Daubenton, Lacépéede being the secre- tary, Thouin the treasurer. Daubenton was succeeded by Jussieu ; and Lacépéde, first by Desfontaines and afterwards by Lamarck, who was elected secretary 18 fructidor, an II. (1794). 54 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK meetings from 4 vendémiaire, l’an III., until 4 vendé- miaire, l’an IV., are each written in his bold, legible handwriting or signed by him. He signed his name Lamarck, this period being that of the first republic. Afterwards, in the records, his name is written De Lamarck. He was succeeded by E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who signed himself plain Geoffroy. In 1802 he acted as treasurer of the Assembly, and again for a period of six years, until and including 1811, when he resigned, the reason given being: “II s’occupe depuis six ans et que ses travaux et son age lui rendent penibles.” Lamarck was,extremely regular in his attendance at these meetings. “From 1793 until 1818 he rarely, if ever, missed a meeting. We have only observed in the records of this long period the absence of his name on two or three occasions from the list of those present. During 1818 and the following year it was his blindness which probably prevented his regular attendance. July 15, 1818, he was present, and pre- sented the fifth volume of his Amzmaux sans Verto- bres; and August 31, 1819, he was present * and laid before the Assembly the sixth volume of the same great work. From the observations of the records we infer that * His attendance this year was infrequent. July 10, 1820, he was present and made a report relative to madrepores and molluscs. In the summer of 1821 he attended several of the meetings. August 7, 1821, he was present, and referred to the collection of shells of Struthi- olaria. He was present May 23d and June oth, when it was voted that he should enjoy the garden of the house he occupied and that a cham- ber should be added to his lodgings. He was frequent in attendance this year, especially during the summer months. He attended a few meetings at intervals in 1822, 1823, and only twice in 1824. At a meeting held April 19, 1825, he was present, and, stating that PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK, WHEN OLD AND BLIND, IN THE COSTUME OF A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE, ENGRAVED IN 1824 LAST DAYS AND DEATH 55 Lamarck never had any long, lingering illness or suffered from overwork, though his life had little sun- shine or playtime in it. He must have had a strong constitution, his only infirmity being the terrible one (especially to an observer of nature) of total blind- ness. Lamarck’s greatest work in systematic zodlogy would never have been completed had it not been for the self-sacrificing spirit and devotion of his eldest daughter. A part of the sixth and the whole of the last volume of the Anzmaux sans Vertebres were pre- sented to the Assembly of Professors September Io, 1822.“ This volume was dictated to and written out by one of his daughters, Mlle. Cornelie De Lamarck. On her the aged savant leaned during the last ten years of his life—those years of failing strength and of blindness finally becoming total. The frail woman accompanied him in his hours of exercise, and when he was confined to his house she never left him. Ut is stated by Cuvier, in his eulogy, that at her first walk out of doors after the end came she was nearly overcome by the fresh air, to which she had become so unaccustomed. } She, indeed, practically sacrificed her life to her father. It is one of the rarest and most striking instances of filial devotion known in the annals of science or literature, and is a noticeable con- his condition did not permit him to lecture, asked to have Audouin take his place, as Latreille’s health did not allow him to take up the work. The next week (26th) he was likewise present. On May 10 he was present, as also on June 28, October 11, and also through De- cember, 1825. His last appearance at these business meetings was on July 11, 1828. 56 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK trast to the daughters of the blind Milton, whose domestic life was rendered unhappy by their unduti- fulness, as they were impatient of the restraint and labors his blindness had imposed upon them.” Besides this, the seventh volume is a voluminous scientific work, filled with very dry special details, making the labor of writing out from dictation, of corrections and preparation for the press, most weari- some and exhausting, to say nothing of the correc- tions of the proof-sheets, a task which probably fell to her—work enough to break down the health of a strong man. It was a natural and becoming thing for the As- sembly of Professors of the Museum, in view of the “malheureuse position de la famille,” to vote to give her employment in the botanical laboratory in arrang- ing and pasting the dried plants, with a salary of 1,000 francs. Of the last illness of Lamarck, and the nature of the sickness to which he finally succumbed, there is no account. It is probable that, enfeebled by the weakness of extreme old age, he gradually sank away without suffering from any acute disease. The exact date of his death has been ascertained by Dr. Mondiére,* with the aid of M. Saint-Joanny, archiviste du Department de la Seine, who made special search for the record. The “acte” states that December 28, 1829, Lamarck, then a widower, died in the Jardin du Roi, at the age of eighty-five years. The obsequies, as stated in the Moniteur Universel * See, for the Acte de décds, L’Homme, iv. p. 289, and Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, etc., p. 24. LAST DAYS AND DEATH 57 of Paris for December 23, 1829, were celebrated on the Sunday previous in the Church of Saint-Médard, his parish. From the church the remains were borne to the cemetery of Montparnasse. At the interment, which took place December 30, M. Latreille, in the name of the Academy of Sciences, and M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the name and on behalf of his col- leagues, the Professors of the Museum of Natural History, pronounced eulogies at the grave. The eulogy prepared by Cuvier, and published after his death, was read at a session of the Academy of Sciences, by Baron Silvestre, November 26, 1832. With the exception of these formalities, the great French naturalist, “the Linné of France,” was buried as one forgotten and unknown. We read with aston- ishment, in the account by Dr. A. Mondiére, who made zealous inquiries for the exact site of the grave of Lamarck, that it is and forever will be unknown. It is. a sad and discreditable, and to us inexplicable, fact that his remains did not receive decent burial. They were not even deposited in a separate grave, but were thrown into a trench apparently situated apart from the other graves, and from which the bones of those thrown there were removed every five years. They are probably now in the catacombs of Paris, mingled with those of the thousands of unknown or paupers in that great ossuary. * * Dr. Mondiére in L’ Homme, iv. p. 291, and Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, p. 271. A somewhat parallel case is that of Mozart, who was buried at Vienna in the common ground of St. Marx, the exact position of his grave being unknown, There were no ceremonies at his grave, and even his friends followed him no farther than the city gates, owing to a violent storm.—( Zhe Century Cyclo- pedia of Names.) 58 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK Dr. Mondiére’s account is as follows. Having found in the Monzteur the notice of the burial services, as above stated, he goes on to say: « Armed with this document, I went again to the cemetery of Montparnasse, where I fortunately found a conservator, M. Lacave, who is entirely au courant with the question of transformism. He therefore in- terested himself in my inquiries, and, thanks to him, I have been able to determine exactly where Lamarck had been buried. I say had been, because, alas! he had been simply placed ina trench off on one side (fosse & part), that is to say, one which should change its occupant at the end of five years. Was it neg- ligence, was it the jealousy of his colleagues, was it the result of the troubles of 1830? In brief, there had been no permission granted to purchase a burial lot. The bones of Lamarck are probably at this moment mixed with those of all the other unknown which lie there. What had at first led us into an error is that we made the inquiries under the name of Lamarck instead of that of de Monnet. In reality, the register of inscription bears the following men- tion: “*De Monnet de Lamarck buried this 20 Decem- ber 1829 (85 years, 3d square, 1st division, 2d line, trench 22.’ “At some period later, a friendly hand, without doubt, had written on the margin of the register the following information : “To the left of M. Dassas.’ “M. Lacave kindly went with us to search for the place where Lamarck had been interred, and on the register we saw this: “« Dassas, Ist division, 4th line south, No. 6 to the west, concession 1165-1829.’ On arriving at the spot designated, we found some new graves, but nothing to indicate that of M. Dassas, our only mark LAST DAYS AND DEATH 59 by which we could trace the site after the changes wrought since 1829. After several ineffectual at- tempts, I finally perceived a flat grave, surrounded by an iron railing, and covered with weeds. Its sur- face seemed to me very regular, and I probed this lot. 792 O77UD2 Db | avhpy prraaznage a27vIAD aye 1% Division pevingd = ajo wy ~ POSITION OF THE BURIAL PLACE OF LAMARCK IN THE CEMETERY OF MONTPARNASSE, There was a gravestone there. The grave-digger who accompanied us cleared away the surface, and I confess that it was with the greatest pleasure and with deep emotion that we read the name Dassas. “ We found the place, but unfortunately, as I have 60 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORE previously said, the remains of Lamarck are no longer there.”’ Mondiére added to his letter a little plan (p. 59), which he drew on the spot.* But the life-;work of Lamarck and his theory of organic evolution, as well as the lessons of his simple and noble character, are more durable and lasting than any monument of stone or brass. His name will never be forgotten either by his own countrymen or by the world of science and philosophy. After the lapse of nearly a hundred years, and in this first year of the twentieth century, his views have taken root and flourished with a surprising strength and vigor, and his name is preéminent among the natu- ralists of his time. No monument exists in Montparnasse, but within the last decade, though the reparation has come tar- dily, the bust of Lamarck may be seen by visitors to the Jardin des Plantes, on the outer wall of the Nouvelle Galerie, containing the Museums of Com- parative Anatomy, Paleontology, and Anthropology. Although the city of Paris has not yet erected a monument to its greatest naturalist, some public recognition of his eminent services to the city and nation was manifested when the Municipal Council of * Still hoping that the site of the grave might have been kept open, and desiring to satisfy myself as to whether there was possibly space enough left on which to erect a modest monument to the memory of Lamarck, I took with me the drochzre containing the letter and plan of Dr. Mondiére to the cemetery of Montparnasse. With the aid of one of the officials I found what he told me was the site, but the entire place was densely covered with the tombs and grave-stones of later inter- ments, rendering the erection of a stone, however small and simple, quite out of the question. LAST DAVS AND DEATH 61 Paris, on February 10, 1875, gave the name Lamarck toa street.* This is a long and not unimportant street on the hill of Montmartre in the XVIII* arrondisse- ment, and in the zone of the old stone or gypsum quarries which existed before Paris extended so far out in that direction, and from which were taken the fossil remains of the early tertiary mammals described by Cuvier. The city of Toulouse has also honored itself by naming one of its streets after Lamarck; this was due to the proposal of Professor Emile Cartailhac to the Municipal Council, which voted to this effect May 12, 1886. In the meetings of the Assembly of Professors no one took the trouble to prepare and enter minutes, however brief and formal, relative to his decease. The death of Lamarck is not even referred to in the Proces-verbaux. This is the more marked because there is an entry in the same records for 1829, and about the same date, of an extraordinary séance held November 19, 1829, when “the Assembly” was convoked to take measures regarding the death of Professor Vauquelin relative to the choice of a candidate, Chevreul being elected to fill his chair. Lamarck’s chair was at his death divided, and the * The Rue Lamarck begins at the elevated square on which is situ- ated the Church of the Sacré-Cceur, now in process of erection, and from this point one obtains a commanding and very fine view over- looking the city ; from there the street curves round to the westward, ending in the Avenue de Saint-Ouen, and continues as a wide and long thoroughfare, ending to the north of the cemetery of Montmartre. A neighboring street, Rue Becquerel, is named after another French savant, and parallel to it is a short street named Rue Darwin. 62 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK two professorships thus formed were given to Latreille and De Blainville. At the session of the Assembly of Professors held December 8, 1829, Geoffroy St. Hilaire sent in a letter to the Assembly urging that the department of invertebrate animals be divided into two, and referred to the bad state of preservation of the insects, the force of assistants to care for these being insufficient. He also, in his usual tactful way, referred to the “complaisance extrime de la parte de M. De La- marck” in 1793, in assenting to the reunion in a single professorship of the mass of animals then called “ zzsectes et vermes.” The two successors of the chair held by Lamarck were certainly not dilatory in asking for appoint- ments. At a session of the Professors held December 22, 1829, the first meeting after his death, we find the following entry: ‘“‘M. Latreille écrit pour exprimer son desir d’étre présenté comme candidat a la chaire vacante par le décés de M. Lamarck et pour rappeler ses titres 4 cette place.” M. de Blainville also wrote in the same manner: “ Dans le cas que la chaire serait divisée, il demande la place de Professeur de Vhistoire des animaux inar- ticulés. Dans le cas contraire il se présente égale- ment comme candidat, voulant, tout en respectant les droits acquis, ne pas laisser dans l’oubli ceux qui lui appartiennent.” January 12, 1830, Latreille* was unanimously elected * Latreille was born at Brives, November 20, 1762, and died Feb- ruary 6, 1833. He was the leading entomologist of his time, and to him Cuvier was indebted for the arrangement of the insects in the LAST DAVS AND DEATH 63 by the Assembly a candidate to the chair of entomol- ogy, and at a following session (February 16th) De Blainville was unanimously elected a candidate for the chair of Molluscs, Vers et Zoophytes, and on the 16th of March the royal ordinance confirming those elections was received by the Assembly. There could have been no fitter appointments made for those two positions. Lamarck had long known Latreille “and loved him as a son.” De Blainville honored and respected Lamarck, and fully appreciated his commanding abilities as an observer and thinker. Régne Animal. His bust is to be seen on the same side of the Nou- velle Galerie in the Jardin des Plantes as those of Lamarck, Cuvier, De Blainville, and D’Orbigny. His first paper was introduced by Lamarck in 1792. In the minutes of the session of 4 thermidor, l'an VI. (July, 1798), we find this entry: ‘‘ The citizen Lamarck an- nounces that the citizen Latreille offered to the administration to work under the direction of that professor in arranging the very numerous collection of insects of the Museum, so as to place them under the eye of the public.” And here he remained until his appointment. Several years (1825) before Lamarck’s death he had asked to have Latreille fill his place in giving instruction. Audouin (1797-1841), also an eminent entomologist and mor- phologist, was appointed aide-naturaliste-adjointin charge of Mollusca, Crustacea, Worms, and Zodphytes. He was afterwards associated with H. Milne Edwards in works on annelid worms. December 26, 1827, Latreille asked to be allowed to employ Boisduval as a préparateur ; he became the author of several works on injurious insects and Lepi- doptera, CHAPTER VI POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SOME LATER BIOLOGISTS DE BLAINVILLE, a worthy successor of Lamarck, in his posthumous book, Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, pays the highest tribute to his predecessor, whose position as the leading naturalist of his time he fully and gratefully acknowledges, saying: “ Among the men whose lectures I have had the advantage of hearing, I truly recognize only three masters, M. de Lamarck, M. Claude Richard, and M. Pinel” (p. 43). He also speaks of wishing to write the scientific biographies of Cuvier and De Lamarck, the two zo- ologists of this epoch whose lectures he most fre- quently attended and whose writings he studied, and ““who have exercised the greatest influence on the zoology of our time” (p. 42). Likewise in the open- ing words of the preface he refers to the rank taken by Lamarck: “The aim which I have proposed to myself in my course on the principles of zodlogy demonstrated by the history of its progress from Aristotle to our time, and consequently the plan which I have followed to attain this aim, have very naturally led me, so to speak, in spite of myself, to signalize in M. de Lamarck the expression of one of those phases POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 65 through which the science of organization has to pass in order to arrive at its last term before showing its true aim. From my point of view this phase does not seem to me to have been represented by any other naturalist of our time, whatever may have been the reputation which he made during his life.” He then refers to the estimation in which Lamarck was held by Auguste Comte, who, in his Cours de Philosophie Positive, has anticipated and even sur- passed himself in the high esteem he felt for “the celebrated author of the Philosophie Zoologique.” The eulogy by Cuvier, which gives most fully the details of the early life of Lamarck, and which has been the basis for all the subsequent biographical sketches, was unworthy of him. Lamarck had, with his customary self-abnegation and generosity, aided and favored the young Cuvier in the beginning of his career,* who in his Régne Animal adopted the classes founded by Lamarck. Thoroughly convinced of the erroneous views of Cuvier in regard to cataclysms, he criticised and opposed them in his writings in a courteous and proper way without directly mention- ing Cuvier by name or entering into any public debate with him. When the hour came for the great comparative anatomist and paleontologist, from his exalted posi- tion, to prepare a tribute to the memory of a natural- ist of equal merit and of a far more thoughtful and * For example, while Cavier’s chair was in the field of vertebrate zodlogy, owing to the kindness of Lamarck (‘‘ par gracieuseté de la part de M. de Lamarck”) he had retained that of Mollusca, and yet it was in the special classification of the molluscs that Lamarck did his best work (Blainville, 1. c., p. 116). 5 66 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK profound spirit, to be read before the French Academy of Sciences, what a eulogy it was—as De Blainville exclaims, ef quel ¢dloge! It was not printed until after Cuvier’s death, and then, it is stated, portions were omitted as not suitable for publication.* This is, we believe, the only stain on Cuvier’s life, and it was unworthy of the great man. In this coge, so different in tone from the many others which are col- lected in the three volumes of Cuvier’s eulogies, he indiscriminately ridicules all of Lamarck’s theories. Whatever may have been his condemnation of La- marck’s essays on physical and chemical subjects, he might have been more reserved and less dogmatic and sarcastic in his estimate of what he supposed to be the value of Lamarck’s views on evolution. It was Cuvier’s adverse criticisms and ridicule and his anti-evolutional views which, more than any other single cause, retarded the progress of biological science and the adoption of a working theory of evolution for which the world had to wait half a century. It even appears that Lamarck was in part instru- mental in inducing Cuvier in 1795 to go to Paris from Normandy, and become connected with the Museum. De Blainville relates that the Abbé Tessier met the young zoélogist at Valmont near Fécamp, and wrote to Geoffroy that “he had just discovered in Nor- *De Blainville states that ‘‘the Academy did not even allow it to be printed in the form in which it was pronounced” (p. 324); and again he speaks of the lack of judgment in Cuvier’s estimate of La- marck, ‘‘ the naturalist who had the greatest force in the general con- ception of beings and of phenomena, although he might often be far from the path” (p. 323). POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 67 mandy a pearl,” and invited him to do what he could to induce Cuvier to come to Paris. “I made,” said Geoffroy, “the proposition to my confréres, but I was supported, and only feebly, by M. de Lamarck, who slightly knew M. Cuvier as the author of a memoir on entomology.” The eulogy pronounced by Geoffroy St. Hilaire over the remains of his old friend and colleague was generous, sympathetic, and heartfelt. “Yes [he said, in his eloquent way], for us who knew M. de Lamarck, whom his counsels have guided, whom we have found always indefatigable, devoted, occupied so willingly with the most difficult labors, we shall not fear to say that sucha loss leaves in our ranks animmense void. From the blessings of such a life, so rich in instructive lessons, so remarkable for the most generous self-abnegation, it is difficult to choose. “A man of vigorous, profound ideas, and very often admirably generalized, Lamarck conceived them with a view to the public good. If he met, as often hap- pened, with great opposition, he spoke of it as a con- dition imposed on every one who begins a reform. Moreover, the great age, the infirmities, but especially the grievous blindness of M. de Lamarck had re- served for him another lot. This great and strong mind could enjoy some consolation in knowing the judgment of posterity, which for him began in his own lifetime. When his last tedious days, useless to science, had arrived, when he had ceased to be sub- jected to rivalry, envy and passion became extin- guished and justice alone remained. De Lamarck then heard impartial voices, the anticipated echo of posterity, which would judge him as history will judge him. Yes, the scientific world has pronounced ‘its judgment in giving him the name of ‘the French Linné,’ thus linking together the two men who have 68 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK both merited a triple crown by their works on general natural history, zodlogy and botany, and whose names, increasing in fame from age to age, will both be handed down to the remotest posterity.”* Also in his Etudes sur la Vie, les Ouvrages, et les Doctrines de Buffon (1838), Geoffroy again, with much warmth of affection, says: “ Attacked on all sides, injured likewise by odious ridicule, Lamarck, too indignant to answer these cut- ting epigrams, submitted to the indignity with a sorrowful patience. . . . Lamarck lived a long while poor, blind, and forsaken, but not by me; I shall ever love and venerate him.” t The following evidently heartfelt and sincere trib- ute to his memory, showing warm esteem and thorough respect for Lamarck, and also a confident feeling that his lasting fame was secure, is to be found in an obscure little book { containing satirical, humorous, but perhaps not always fair or just, char- acterizations and squibs concerning the professors and aid-naturalists of the Jardin des Plantes. “What head will not be uncovered on hearing pro- nounced the name of the man whose genius was ignored and who languished steeped in bitterness. Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone with a glory of whose extent he himself was conscious, but which only the coming ages will sanction, when shall be revealed more clearly the laws of organization. * eee Biographiques, pp. 209-219. tlic. t Histoare Waturelle Drolatique et Philosophique des Professeurs du Jardin des Plantes, etc. Par Isid. S. de Gosse. Avec des Annota- tions de MM. Frédéric Gerard. Paris, 1847. POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 69 “Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is better than the ephemeral glory of men who only maintain their reputation by sharing in the errors of their time. “Honor tothee! Respect tothy memory! Thou hast died in the breach while fighting for truth, and the truth assures thee immortality.” Lamarck’s theoretical views were not known in Germany until many years after his death. Had Goethe, his contemporary (1749-1832), known of them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his speculations, have expressed his appreciation of them, and Lamarck’s reputation would, in his own lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his later years at Paris. Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, came from Ernst Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive works have been so widely read. In his History of Creation (1868) he thus estimates Lamarck’s work as a philosopher: * Wu To him will always belong the immortal glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent, as an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the philosophical foundation of the whole science of biology.” Referring to the Philosophie Zoologique, he says: “«This admirable work is the first connected ex- position of the theory of descent carried out strictly into all its consequences. By its purely mechanical method of viewing organic nature, and the strictly philosophical proofs brought forward in it, Lamarck’s work is raised far above the prevailing dualistic views of his time; and with the exception of Darwin’s 70 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK work, which appeared just half a century later, we know of none which we could, in this respect, place by the side of the Phzlosophie Zoologique. How far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen from the circumstance that it was not understood by most men, and for fifty years was not spoken of at all. Cuvier, Lamarck’s greatest opponent, in his Report on the Progress of Natural Science, in which the most unimportant anatomical investigations are enumerated, does not devote a single word to this work, which forms an epoch in science. Goethe, also, who took such a lively interest in the French nature- philosophy and in the ‘thoughts of kindred minds beyond the Rhine,’ nowhere mentions Lamarck, and does not seem to have known the Philosophie Zo- ologigue at all.” «Again in 1882 Haeckel writes: * “We regard it as a truly tragic fact that the Phi losophie Zoologique of Lamarck, one of the greatest productions of the great literary period of the begin- ning of our century, received at first only the slight- est notice, and within a few years became wholly forgotten. . . . Not until fully fifty years later, when Darwin breathed new life into the transforma- tion views founded therein, was the buried treasure again recovered, and we cannot refrain from regarding it as the most complete presentation of the develop- ment theory before Darwin. “While Lamarck clearly expressed all the essential fundamental ideas of our present doctrine of descent ; and excites our admiration at the depth of his mor- phological knowledge, he none the less surprises us by the prophetic (vorausschauende) clearness of his physiological conceptions.” Mi * Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck, Jena, 1882, ESTIMATES OF HIS CHARACTER AND WORK 71 In his views on life, the nature of the will and reason, and other subjects, Haeckel declares that Lamarck was far above most of his contemporaries, and that he sketched out a programme of the biology of the future which was not carried out until our day. J. Victor Carus* also claims for Lamarck “the lasting merit of having been the first to have placed | the theory (of descent) on a scientific foundation.” The best, most catholic, and just exposition of La- marck’s views, and which is still worth reading, is that by Lyell in Chapters XXXIV.-XXXVI. of his Principles of Geology, 1830, and though at that time one would not look for an acceptance of views which then seemed extraordinary and, indeed, far-fetched, Lyell had no words of satire and ridicule, only a calm, able statement and discussion of his principles. Indeed, it is well known that when, in after years, his friend Charles Darwin published his views, Lyell expressed some leaning towards the older specula- tions of Lamarck. Lyell’s opinions as to the interest and value of Lamarck’s ideas may be found in his Lzfe and Letters, and also in the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. In the chapter, Ox the Reception of the Origin of Species, by Huxley, are the following extracts from Lyell’s Letters (ii., pp. 179-204). In a letter ad- dressed to Mantell (dated March 2, 1827), Lyell speaks of having just read Lamarck; he expresses his delight at Lamarck’s theories, and his personal freedom from any objections based on theological * Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Foh. Miller und Charles Darwin, 1872. 72 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK grounds. And though he is evidently alarmed at the pithecoid origin of man involved in Lamarck’s doc- trine, he observes: “But, after all, what changes species may really undergo! How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line beyond which some of the so-called extinct species have never passed into recent ones?” He also quotes a remarkable passage in the post- script to a letter written to Sir John Herschel in 1836: “In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find that you think it probable it may be carried on through the intervention of inter- mediate causes.” How nearly Lyell was made a convert to evolution by reading Lamarck’s works may be seen by the fol- lowing extracts from his letters, quoted by Huxley: “JT think the old ‘creation’ is almost as much re- quired as ever, but of course it takes a new form if Lamarck’s views, improved by yours, are adopted.” (To Darwin, March 11, 1863, p. 363.) “ As to Lamarck, I find that Grove, who has been reading him, is wonderfully struck with his book. I remember that it was the conclusion he (Lamarck) came to about man, that fortified me thirty years ago against the great impression which his argument at first made on my mind—all the greater because Con- stant Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier forty years ago, told me his conviction ‘that Cuvier thought species not real, but that science could not advance without as- suming that they were so.’”’ “When I came to the conclusion that after all La- marck was going to be shown to be right, that we must ‘go the whole orang,’ I re-read his book, and ESTIMATES OF HIS CHARACTER AND WORK 73 remembering when it was written, I felt I had done him injustice. “Even as to man’s gradual acquisition of more and more ideas, and then of speech slowly as the ideas multiplied, and then his persecution of the beings most nearly allied and competing with him—all this is very Darwinian. “ The substitution of the variety-making power for ‘volition,’ ‘muscular action,’ etc. (and in plants even volition was not called in), is in some respects only a change of names. Call a new variety a new crea- tion, one may say of the former, as of the latter, what you say when you observe that the creationist explains nothing, and only affirms ‘it is so because it is so.’ “ Lamarck’s belief in the slow changes in the or- ganic and inorganic world in the year 1800 was surely above the standard of his times, and he was right about progression in the main, though you have vastly advanced that doctrine. As to Owen in his ‘Aye Aye’ paper, he seems to mea disciple of Pou- chet, who converted him at Rouen to ‘spontaneous generation.’ “ Have I not, at p. 412, put the vast distinction be- tween you and Lamarck as to ‘necessary progres- sion’ strongly enough?” (To Darwin, March 15, 1863. Lyell’s Letters, ii., p. 365.) Darwin, in the freedom of private correspondence, paid scant respect to the views of his renowned pre- decessor, as the following extracts from his published letters will show: “Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a ‘tendency to progression,’ ‘adaptations from the slow willing of animals,’ etc. But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so.” (Darwin's Lzfe and Letters, ti., p. 23, 1844.) 74 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK “With respect to books on this subject, I do not know of any systematical ones, except Lamarck’s, which is veritable rubbish. . . . Is it not strange that the author of such a book as the Animaux sans Vertibres should have written that insects, which never see their eggs, should wd2// (and plants, their seeds) to be of particular forms, so as to become at- tached to particular objects.” * (ii., p. 29, 1844.) “Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has disbelieved in per- manent species, but he in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm.” (ii., p. 39, no date.) \S« To talk of climate or Lamarckian habit producing such adaptions to other organic beings is futile.” (ii., p. 121, 1858.) On the other hand, another great English thinker and naturalist of rare breadth and catholicity, and despite the fact that he rejected Lamarck’s peculiar evolutional views, associated him with the most emi- nent biologists. In a letter to Romanes, dated in 1882, Huxley thus estimates Lamarck’s position in the scientific world: “Tam not likely to take a low view of Darwin’s position in the history of science, but I am disposed to think that Buffon and Lamarck would run him hard in both genius and fertility. In breadth of view and in extent of knowledge these two men were giants, though we are apt to forget their services. * We have been unable to find these statements in any of La- marck’s writings. ae nes es ESTIMATES OF HIS CHARACTER AND WORK 75 Von Bar was another man of the same stamp ; Cuvier, in a somewhat lower rank, another; and J. Miller another.” (Life and Letters of Thomas FHlenry Huzley, ii., p. 42, 1900. The memory of Lamarck is deeply and warmly cherished throughout France. He gave his country a second Linné. One of the leading botanists in Eu- rope, and the greatest zodlogist of his time, he now shares equally with Geoffroy St. Hilaire and with Cuvier the distinction of raising biological science to that eminence in the first third of the nineteenth century which placed France, as the mother of biolo- gists, in the van of all the nations. When we add to his triumphs in pure zodlogy the fact that he was in his time the philosopher of biology, it is not going too far to crown him as one of the intellectual glories, not only of France, but of the civilized world. How warmly his memory is now cherished may be appreciated by the perusal of the following letter, with its delightful reminiscences, for which we are in- debted to the venerable and distinguished zodlogist and comparative anatomist who formerly occupied the chair made illustrious by Lamarck, and by his successor, De Blainville, and who founded the Laboratoire Arago on the Mediterranean, also that of Experi- mental Zodlogy at Roscoff, and who still conducts the Journal de Zoologie Expérimentale. PARIS LE 28 Décembre, 1899. M. le PROFESSEUR PACKARD. Cher Monsieur: Vous m’avez fait ’honneur de me demander des renseignements sur la famille de De Lamarck, et sur ses relations, afin de vous en 76 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK servir dans la biographie que vous préparez de notre grand naturaliste. Je n’ai rien appris de plus que ce que vous voulez bien me rappeler comme l’ayant trouvé dans mon adresse de 1889. Je ne connais plus ni les noms ni les adresses des parents de De Lamarck, et c’est avec regret qu'il ne m’est pas possible de répondre a vos désirs. Lorsque je commengai mes études a Paris, on ne s’occupait guére des idées générales de De Lamarck que pour s’en moquer. Excepté Geoffroy St. Hilaire et De Blainville, dont j’ai pu suivre les belles legons et qui le citaient souvent, on parlait peu de la philosophie zoologique. Il m’a été possible de causer avec des anciens col- légues du grand naturaliste; au Jardin des Plantes de trés grands savants, dont je ne veux pas €crire le nom, le traitaient de fou / Il avait loué un appartement sur le haut d’une maison, et l4 cherchait d’aprés la direction des nuages a prévoir l'état du temps. On riait de ces études. N’est-ce pas comme un observatoire de météorologie que ce savant zoologiste avait pour ainsi dire fondé avant que la science ne se fut emparée de l’idée? Lorsque j’eus l’honneur d’étre nommé professeur au Jardin des Plantes en 1865, je fis l'historique de la chaire que j’occupais, et qui avait été illustrée par De Lamarck et De Blainville. Je crois que je suis le premier & avoir fait histoire de notre grand naturaliste dans un cours public. Je dus travailler pas mal pour arriver a bien saisir ’idée fondamentale de la philoso- phie. Les définitions de la nature et des forces qui président aux changements qui modifient les étres d’aprés les conditions auxquelles ils sont soumis ne sont pas toujours faciles a rendre claires pour un public souvent difficile. Ce qui frappe surtout dans ses raisonnements, c’est ESTIMATES OF HIS CHARACTER AND WORK 77 que De Lamarck est parfaitement logique. Il com- prend trés bien ce que plus d’un transformiste de nos jours ne cherche pas a éclairer, que le premier pas, le pas difficile 4 faire pour arriver A expliquer la création par des modifications successives, c’est le passage de la matiére inorganique a la matiére organisée, et il imagine la chaleur et l’électricité comme étant les deux facteurs qui par attraction ou répulsion finissent par former ces petits amas organisés qui seront le point de départ de toutes les transformations de tous les organismes. Voila le point de départ—la génération spontanée se trouve ainsi expliquée! De Lamarck était un grand et profond observateur. On me disait au Museum (des contemporains) qu’il avait l’Instinct de l’Espéce. Il y aurait beaucoup a dire sur cette expression—l’instinct de l’espece—il mest difficile dans une simple lettre de développer des idées philosophiques que j’ai sur cette question,— laquelle suppose la notion de l’individu parfaitement définie et acquis. Jene vousciteraiqu’un exemple. Je nel’aivu signalé nulle part dans les ouvrages anciens sur De Lamarck. Qu’étaient nos connaissances a l’époque de De Lamarck sur les Polypiers? Les Hydraires étaient loin d’avoir fourni les remarquables observations qui parurent dans le milieu a peu prés du siécle qui vient de finir, et cependant De Lamarck déplace hardiment la Lucernaire—l’éloigne des Coralliaires, et la rap- proche des étres qui forment le grand groupe des Hydraires. Ce trait me parait remarquable et le rap- porte a cette réputation qu’il avait au Museum de jouir de l’instinct de l’espéce. De toute part on acclame le grand naturaliste, et’il n’y a pas méme une rue portant son nom aux environs du Jardin des Plantes? J’ai eu beau réclamer le conseil municipal de Paris 4 d’autres favoris que De Lamarck. 73 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK Lorsque le Jardin des Plantes fut réorganisé par la Convention, De Lamarck avait 50 ans. II ne s’était jusqu’alors occupé que de botanique. II fut a cet age chargé de Vhistoire de la partie du régne animal renfermant les animaux invertébres sauf les Insectes et les Crustacés. La chaire est restée la méme; elle comprend les vers, les helminthes, les mollusques, et ce qu’on appelait autrefois les Zoophytes ou Rayonnées, enfin les Infusoires. Quelle puissance de travail! Ne fallait-il pas pour passer de la Botanique, 4 50 ans, & la Zoologie, et laisser un ouvrage semblable a celui qui illustre encore le nom du Botaniste devenue Zoologiste par ordre de la Convention ! Sans doute dans cet ouvrage il y a bien des choses qui ne sont plus acceptables—mais pour le juger avec équité, il faut se porter a l’époque ot il fut fait, et alors on est pris d’admiration pour l’auteur d’un aussi immense travail. J’ai une grande admiration pour le génie de De Lamarck, et je ne puis que vous louer de le faire encore mieux connaitre de nos contemporains. Recevez, mon cher collégue, l’expression de mes sentiments d’estime pour vos travaux remarquables et croyez-moi—tout a vous, H. DE LacazE DUTHIERS. CHAPTER VII LAMARCK’S WORK IN METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE WHEN a medical student in Paris, Lamarck, from day to day watching the clouds from his attic windows, became much interested in meteorology, and, indeed, at first this subject had nearly as much attraction for him as botany. Fora long period he pursued these studies, and he was the first one to foretell the prob- abilities of the weather, thus anticipating by over half a century the modern idea of making the science of meteorology of practical use to mankind. His article, “ De l’influence de la lune sur |’atmos- phere terrestre,” appeared in the Journal de Physique for 1798, and was translated in two English journals. The titles of several other essays will be found in the Bibliography at the close of this volume. From 1799 to 1810 he regularly published an an- nual meteorological report containing the statement of probabilities acquired by a long series of observa- tions on the state of the weather and the variations of the atmosphere at different times of the year, giving indications of the periods when to expect pleasant weather, or rain, storms, tempests, frosts, thaws, etc.; finally the citations of these probabilities of times favorable to fétes, journeys, voyages, har- 80 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK vesting crops, and other enterprises dependent on good weather. Lamarck thus explained the principles on which he based his probabilities: Two kinds of causes, he says, displace the fluids which compose the atmos- phere, some being variable and irregular, others con- stant, whose action is subject to progressive and fixed laws. Between the tropics constant causes exercise an action so considerable that the irregular effects of vari- able causes are there in some degree lost ; hence result the prevailing winds which in these climates become established and change at determinate epochs. Beyond the tropics, and especially toward the middle of the temperate zones, variable causes pre- dominate. We can, however, still discover there the effects of the action of constant causes, though much weakened ; we can assign them the principal epochs, and in a great number of cases make this knowledge turn to our profit. It is in the elevation and depres- sion (abaissement) of the moon above and below the celestial equator that we should seek for the most constant of these causes. With his usual facility in such matters, he was not long in advancing a theory, according to which the atmosphere is regarded as resembling the sea, having a surface, waves, and storms; it ought likewise to have a flux and reflux, for the moon ought to ex- ercise the same influence upon it that it does on the ocean. In the temperate and frigid zones, therefore, the wind, which is only the tide of the atmosphere, must depend greatly on the declination of the moon; SPECULATIONS ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE 8I it ought to blow toward the pole that is nearest to it, and advancing in that direction only, in order to reach every place, traversing dry countries or ex- tensive seas, it ought then to render the sky serene or stormy. If the influence of the moon on the weather is denied, it is only that it may be referred to its phases, but its position in the ecliptic is re- garded as affording probabilities much nearer the truth.* In each of these annuals Lamarck took great care to avoid making any positive predictions. “No one,” he says, “ could make these predictions without deceiv- ing himself and abusing the confidence of persons who might place reliance on them.” He only intended to propose simple probabilities. After the publication of the first of these annuals, at the request of Lamarck, who had made it the sub- ject of a memoir read to the Institute in 1800 (9 ventose, l’an IX.), Chaptal, Minister of the Interior, thought it well to establish in France a regular cor- respondence of meteorological observations made daily at different points remote from each other, and he conferred the direction of it on Lamarck. This system of meteorological reports lasted but a short time, and was not maintained by Chaptal’s successor. After three of these annual reports had appeared, Lamarck rather suddenly stopped publishing them, and an incident occurred in connection with their cessation which led to the story that he had suffered ill treatment and neglect from Napoleon I. * “On the Influence of the Moon on the Earth’s Atmosphere,” Journal de Physique, prairial, l’an VI. (1798). 6 82 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK It has been supposed that Lamarck, who was frank and at times brusque in character, had made some enemies, and that he had been represented to the Emperor as a maker of almanacs and of weather predictions, and that Napoleon, during a reception, showing to Lamarck his great dissatisfaction with the annuals, had ordered him to stop their publica- tion. But according to Bourguin’s statement this is not the correct version. He tells us: “ According to traditions preserved in the family of Lamarck things did not happen so at all. During a reception given to the Institute at the Tuileries, Napoleon, who really liked Lamarck, spoke to him in a jocular way about his weather probabilities, and Lamarck, very much provoked (¢rés contrarié) at being thus chaffed in the presence of his colleagues, resolved to stop the publication of his observations on the weather. What proves that this version is the true one is that Lamarck published another an- nual which he had in preparation for the year 1810. In the preface he announced that his age, ill health, and his circumstances placed him in the unfortunate necessity of ceasing to busy himself with this periodi- cal work. He ended by inviting those who had the taste for meteorological observations, and the means of devoting their time to it, to take up with con- fidence an enterprise good in itself, based on a genuine foundation, and from which the public would derive advantageous results.” These opuscles, such as they were, in which Lamarck treated different subjects bearing on the winds, great droughts, rainy seasons, tides, etc., be- SPECULATIONS ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE 83 came the precursors of the Anuuaires du Bureau des Longitudes. An observation of Lamarck’s on a rare and curious form of cloud has quite recently been referred to by a French meteorologist. It is probable, says M. E. Durand-Greville in La Nature, November 24, 1900, that Lamarck was the first to observe the so-called pocky or festoon cloud, or mammato-cirrus cloud, which at rare intervals has been observed since his time.* Full of over confidence in the correctress of his views formed without reference to experiments, although Lavoisier, by his discovery of oxygen in the years 1772-85, and other researches, had laid the foundations of the antiphlogistic or modern chemistry, Lamarck quixotically attempted to sub- stitute his own speculative views for those of the discoverers of oxygen—Priestley (1774) and the great French chemist Lavoisier. Lamarck, in his Hydrogéologie (1802), went so far as to declare: Mn It is not true, and it seems to me even absurd to believe that pure air, which has been justly called vital air,and which chemists now call oxygen gas, can be the radical of saline matters—namely, can be the principle of acidity, of causticity, or any salinity whatever. There are a thousand ways of refuting | this error without the possibility of a reply. This hypothesis, the best of all those which had been imagined when Lavoisier conceived it, cannot now be longer held, since I have discovered what is really caloric” (p. 161). * Nature, Dec. 6, 1900, 84 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK After paying his respects to Priestley, he asks: “What, then, can be the reason why the views chemists and mine are so opposed?”’ and complains* that the former have avoided all written discussion on this subject. And this after his three physico- chemical works, the Refutation, the Recherches, and the Mémoires had appeared, and seemed to chemists to be unworthy of a reply. It must be admitted that Lamarck was on this occasion unduly self-opinionated and stubborn in ad- hering to such views at a time when the physical sciences were being placed on a firm and lasting basis by experimental philosophers. The two great lessons of science—to suspend one’s judgment and to wait for more light in theoretical matters on which scientific men were so divided—and the necessity of adhering to his own line of biological study, where he had facts of his own observing on which to rest his opinions, Lamarck did not seem ever to have learned. The excuse for his rash and quixotic course in re- spect to his physico-chemical vagaries is that he had great mental activity. Lamarck was a synthetic philosopher. He had been brought up in the ency- clopeedic period of learning. He had from his early manhood been deeply interested in physical subjects. In middle age he probably lived a very retired life, did not mingle with his compeers or discuss his views with them. So that when he came to publish them, he found not a single supporter. His speculations were received in silence and not deemed worthy of discussion. SPECULATIONS ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE 85 A very just and discriminating judge of Lamarck’s work, Professor Cleland, thus refers to his writings on physics and chemistry: “The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be admitted, quite apart from all consideration of the famous hypothesis which bears his name, to have been want of control in speculation. Doubtless the speculative tendency furnished a powerful incentive to work, but it outran the legitimate deductions from observation, and led him into the production of vol- umes of worthless chemistry without experimental basis, as well as into spending much time in fruitless meteorological predictions.” (ucyc. Brit., Art. La- MARCK.) , How a modern physicist regards Lamarck’s views on physics may be seen by the following statement kindly written for this book by Professor Carl Barus of Brown University, Providence: “Lamarck’s physical and chemical speculations, made throughout on the basis of the alchemistic philosophy of the time, will have little further inter- est to-day than as evidence showing the broadly philosophic tendencies of Lamarck’s mind. Made without experiment and without mathematics, the contents of the three volumes will hardly repay perusal, except by the historian interested in certain aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science. The temerity with which physical phenomena are referred to oc- cult static molecules, permeated by subtle fluids, the whole mechanism left without dynamic quality, since the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is markedly in contrast with the discredit into which such hypotheses have now fallen. It is true that an explanation of natural phenomena in terms “le feu éthéré, le feu calorique, et le feu fixé” might be in- 86 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK terpreted with reference to the modern doctrine of energy; but it is certain that Lamarck, antedating Fresnel, Carnot, Ampére, not to mention their great followers, had not the faintest inkling of the possi- bility of such an interpretation. Indeed, one may readily account for the resemblance to modern views, seeing that all speculative systems of science must to some extent run in parallel, inasmuch as they begin with the facts of common experience. Nor were his speculations in any degree stimulating to theoretical science. Many of his mechanisms in which the ether operates on a plane of equality with the air can only be regarded with amusement. The whole of his elaborate schemes of color classification may be instanced as forerunners of the methods commer- cially in vogue to-day; they are not the harbingers of methods scientifically in vogue. One looks in vain .for research adequate to carry the load of so much speculative text. ‘Even if we realize that the beginnings of science could but be made amid such groping in the dark, it is a pity that a man of Lamarck’s genius, which seems to have been destitute of the instincts of an experimentalist, should have lavished so much serious thought in evolving a system of chemical physics out of himself.” The chemical status of Lamarck’s writings is thus stated by Professor H. Carrington Bolton in a letter dated Washington, D. C., February 9, igoo: “Excuse delay in replying to your inquiry as to the chemical status of the French naturalist, La- marck. Not until this morning have I found it con- venient to go to the Library of Congress. That Li- brary has not the Recherches nor the Mémoires, but the position of Lamarck is well known. He had no influence on chemistry, and his name is not men- SPECULATIONS ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE 87 tioned in the principal histories cf chemistry. He made no experiments, but depended upon his imagi- nation for his facts; he opposed the tenets of the new French school founded by Lavoisier, and pro- posed a fanciful scheme of abstract principles that remind one of alchemy. “Cuvier, in his Eloge (Mémoires Acad. Royale des Sczences, 1832), estimates Lamarck correctly as re- spects his position in physical science.” Lamarck boldly carried the principle of change and evolution into inorganic nature by the same law of change of circumstances producing change of species. Under the head, “ De l’espéce parmi les minéraux,” Pp. 149, the author states that he had for a long time supposed that there were no species among minerals. Here, also, he doubts, and boldly, if not rashly, in this case, opposes accepted views, and in this field, as elsewhere, shows, at least, his independence of thought. “ They teach in Paris,” he says, “that the integrant molecule of each kind of compound is invariable in nature, and consequently that it is as old as nature, hence, mineral species are constant. “For myself, I declare that I am persuaded, and even feel convinced, that the integrant molecule of every compound substance whatever, may change its nature, namely, may undergo changes in the number and in the proportions of the principles which com- 440? é f : pees elite no wr “20d He enlarges on this subject through eight pages. He was evidently led to take this view from his as- sumption that everything, every natural object, or- ganic or inorganic, undergoes a change. But it may 88 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK be objected that this view will not apply to minerals, because those of the archzan rocks do not differ, and have undergone no change since then to the’ present time, unless we except such minerals as are alteration products due to metamorphism. The primary laws of nature, of physics, and of chemistry are unchange- able, while change, progression from the generalized to the specialized, is distinctly characteristic of the organic as opposed to the inorganic world. CHAPTER VIII LAMARCK’S WORK IN GEOLOGY WHATEVER may be said of his chemical and phy- sical lucubrations, Lamarck in his geological and paleontological writings is, despite their errors, al- ways suggestive, and in some most important respects in advance of his time. And this largely for the rea- son that he had once travelled, and to some extent observed geological phenomena, in the central regions of France, in Germany, and Hungary ; visiting mines and collecting ores and minerals, besides being in a degree familiar with the French cretaceous fossils, but more especially those of the tertiary strata of Paris and its vicinity. He had, therefore, from his own experience, slight as it was, some solid grounds of facts and observations on which to meditate and from which to reason. He did not attempt to touch upon cosmological theories—chaos and creation—but, rather, confined himself to the earth, and more particularly to the ac- tion of the ocean, and to the changes which he believed to be due to organic agencies. The most impressive truth in geology is the conception of the immensity of past time, and this truth Lamarck fully realized. His views are to be found in a little book of 268 pages, entitled Hydrogéologie. It appeared in 1802 90 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK (an X.), or ten years before the first publication of Cuvier’s famous Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe (1812). Written in his popular and attractive style, and thoroughly in accord with the cosmological and theological prepossessions of the age, the Discours was widely read, and passed through many editions. On the other hand, the Aydro- géologie died stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a reader, never reaching a second edition, and is now, like most of his works, a bibliographical rarity. The only writer who has said a word in its favor, or contrasted it with the work of Cuvier, is the ju- dicious and candid Huxley, who, though by no means favorable to Lamarck’s factors of evolution, frankly said : “The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses. of special creation and of catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the Dzscours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe were held to be models of sound scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophic hypotheses of the Hydrogéologie were scouted.” * Before summarizing the contents of this book, let us glance at the geological atmosphere—thin and tenuous as it was then—in which Lamarck lived. The credit of being the first observer, before Steno (1669), to state that fossils are the remains of animals which were once alive, is due to an Italian, Frasca- tero, of Verona, who wrote in 1517. * Evolution in Biology, in Darwiniana, New York, 1896, p. 212. LAMARCK’S WORK IN GEOLOGY gI “But,” says Lyell,* “the clear and philosophical views of Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: First, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could not be explained by the deluge of Noah.” Previous to this the great artist, architect, engineer, and musician, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who, among other great works, planned and executed some navigable canals in Northern Italy, and who was an observer of rare penetration and judgment, saw how fossil shells were formed, saying that the mud of rivers had covered and penetrated into the interior of fossil shells at a time when these were still at the bottom of the sea near the coast.t That versatile and observing genius, Bernard Palissy, as early as 1580, in a book entitled The Orz- gin of Springs from Rain-water, and in other writings, criticized the notions of the time, especially of Italian writers, that petrified shells had all been left by the universal deluge. “Tt has happened,” said Fontenelle, in his eulogy on Palissy, delivered before the French Academy a century and a half later, “that a potter who knew neither Latin nor Greek dared, toward the end of the sixteenth century, to say in Paris, and in the pres- ence of all the doctors, that fossil shells were veritable shells deposited at some time by the sea in the places * Principles of Geology. { Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 8th edit., p. 22. g2 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK where they were then found; that the animals had given to the figured stones all their different shapes, and that he boldly defied all the school of Aristotle to attack his proofs.” * Then succeeded, at the end of the seventeenth century, the forerunners of modern geology: Steno (1669), Leibnitz (1683), Ray (1692), Woodward (1695), Vallisneri (1721), while Moro published his views in 1745. In the eighteenth century Réaumur + (1720) presented a paper on the fossil shells of Touraine. Cuvier ¢{ thus pays his respects, in at least an un- sympathetic way, to the geological essayists and compilers of the seventeenth century: “ The end of the seventeenth century lived to see the birth of a new science, which took, in its infancy, the high-sounding name of ‘Theory of the Earth.’ Starting from a small number of facts, badly observed, connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pre- tended to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play with them, and to create their history. Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, alto- gether seemed to render it foreign to the other sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a long time cast it out of the circle of their studies.” Their views, often premature, composed of half- truths, were mingled with glaring errors and fantastic misconceptions, but were none the less germinal. Leibnitz was the first to propose the nebular hypoth- esis, which was more fully elaborated by Kant and Laplace. Buffon, influenced by the writing of Leib- * Quoted from Flouren’s Eloge Historique de Georges Cuvier, Hoefer’s edition. Paris, 1854. + Remargues sur les Cogutilles fossiles de quelques Cantons de la Touraine. Mém, Acad, Sc. Paris, 1720, pp. 400-417. t Eloge Historique de Werner, p. 113. LAMARCK’S WORK IN GEOLOGY 93 nitz, in his Théorie de la Terre, published in 1749, adopted his notion of an original volcanic nucleus and a universal ocean, the latter as he thought leav- ing the land dry by draining into subterranean cav- erns. He also dimly saw, or gathered from his read- ing, that the mountains and valleys were due to secondary causes; that fossiliferous strata had been deposited by ocean currents, and that rivers had transported materials from the highlands to the low- lands. He also states that many of the fossil shells which occur in Europe do not live in the adjacent seas, and that there are remains of fishes and of plants not now living in Europe, and which are either extinct or live in more southern climates, and others in tropical seas. Also that the bones and teeth of elephants and of the rhinoceros and hippo- potamus found in Siberia and elsewhere in northern Europe and Asia indicate that these animals must have lived there, though at present restricted to the tropics. In his last essay, Lpogues de la Nature (1778), he claims that the earth’s history may be divided into epochs, from the earliest to the present time. The first epoch was that of fluidity, of incan- descence, when the earth and the planets assumed their form; the second, of cooling; the third, when the waters covered the earth, and volcanoes began to be active; the fourth, that of the retreat of the seas, and the fifth the age when the elephants, the hippopotamus, and other southern animals lived in the regions of the north; the sixth, when the two continents, America and the old world, became sepa- rate; the seventh and last being the age of man. 94 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK Above all, by his attractive style and bold sugges- tions he popularized the subjects and created an in- terest in these matters and a spirit of inquiry which spread throughout France and the rest of Europe. But notwithstanding the crude and uncritical na- ture of the writings of the second half of the eight- eenth century, resulting from the lack of that more careful and detailed observation which characterizes our day, there was during this period a widespread interest in physical and natural science, and it led up to that more exact study of nature which signal- izes the nineteenth century. ‘“ More new truths concerning the external world,” says Buckle, “were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all preceding periods put together.”* As Perkins+ says: “Interest in scientific study, as in political investigation, seemed to rise suddenly from almost complete inactivity to extraordinary development. In both departments English thinkers had led the way, but if the impulse to such investigations came from without, the work done in France in every branch of scientific research during the eighteenth century was excelled by no other nation, and England alone could assert any claim to results of equal importance. The researches of Coulomb in electricity, of Buffon in geology, of Lavoisier in chemistry, of Daubenton in comparative anatomy, carried still farther by their illustrious suc- cessors towards the close of the century, did much to establish conceptions of the universe and its laws * History of Civilization, i, p. 627. + France under Louis XV., p. 359. LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY 95 upon a scientific basis.” And not only did Rousseau make botany fashionable, but Goldsmith wrote from Paris in 1755: “I have seen as bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles.” Petit lectured on astron- omy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and ladies of fashion, as well as profes- sional students.* The popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu, Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopeedists. Here should be mentioned one of Buffon’s contem- poraries and countrymen ; one who was the first true field geologist, an observer rather than a compiler or theorist. This was Jean E. Guettard (1715-1786). He published, says Sir Archibald Geikie, in his valu- able work, The Founders of Geology, about two hun- dred papers on a wide range of scientific subjects, besides half a dozen quarto volumes of his observa- tions, together with many excellent plates. Geikie also states that he is undoubtedly entitled to rank among the first great pioneers of modern geology. He was the first (1751) to make a geological map of northern France, and roughly traced the limits of his three bands or formations from France across the southeastern English counties. In his work on “ The degradation of mountains effected in our time by heavy rains, rivers, and the sea,’’+ he states that the * France under Louis XV., p. 360. +See vol. iii. of his Mémoires sur differentes Parties des Sciences et des Arts, pp. 209-403. Geikie does not give the date of the third volume of his work, but it was apparently about 1771, as vol. ii. was published in 1770. I copy Geikie’s account of Guet- tard’s observations often in his own words, 96 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK sea is the most potent destroyer of the land, and that the material thus removed is deposited either on the land or along the shores of the sea. He thought that the levels of the valleys are at present being raised, owing to the deposit of detritus in them. He points out that the deposits laid down by the ocean do not extend far out to sea, “that consequently the eleva- tions of new mountains in the sea, by the deposition of sediment, is a process very difficult to conceive ; that the transport of the sediment as far as the equa- tor is not less improbable; and that still more diff- cult to accept is the suggestion that the sediment from our continent is carried into the seas of the New World. In short, we are still very little ad- vanced towards the theory of the earth as it now exists.” Guettard was the first to discover the vol- canoes of Auvergne, but he was “hopelessly wrong” in regard to the origin of basalt, forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his “observations in Auvergne practically started the Vulcanist camp.” We now come to Lamarck’s own time. He must have been familiar with the results of Pallas’s travels in Russia and Siberia (1793-94). The distinguished German zodlogist and geologist, besides working out the geology of the Ural Mountains, showed, in 1777, that there was a general law in the formation of all mountain chains composed chiefly of primary rocks; * the granitic axis being flanked by schists, and these * Lyell’s Principles of Geolozy. LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY 97 by fossiliferous strata. From his obsérvations made on the Volga and about its mouth, he presented proofs of the former extension, in comparatively re- cent times, of the Caspian Sea. But still more preg- nant and remarkable was his discovery of an entire rhinoceros, with its flesh and skin, in the frozen soil of Siberia. His memoir on this animal places him among the forerunners of, if not within the ranks of, the founders of palzontology. Meanwhile Soldani, an Italian, had, in 1780, showt- that the limestone strata of Italy had accumulated in a deep sea, at least far from land, and he was the first to observe the alternation of marine and fresh-water strata in the Paris basin. Lamarck must have taken much interest in the famous controversy between the Vulcanists and Nep- tunists. He visited Freyburg in 1771; whether he met Werner is not known, as Werner began to lecture in 1775. He must have personally known Faujas of Paris, who, in 1779, published his description of the volcanoes of Vivarais and Velay; while Des- marest’s (1725-1815) elaborate work on the volcanoes of Auvergne, published in 1774, in which he proved the igneous origin of basalt, was the best piece of geological exploration which had yet been accom- plished, and is still a classic.* Werner (1750-1817), the propounder of the Nep- tunian theory, was one of the founders of modern geology and of paleontology. His work entitled * Geikie states that the doctrine of the origin of valleys by the erosive action of the streams which flow through them, though it has been credited to various writers, was first clearly taught from actual concrete examples by Desmarest. L.c., p. 65. ra / 98 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK Ueber die atissern Kennzeichen der Fossilien ap- peared in 1774; his Kurze Klassifikation und Be- schreibung der Gebirgsarten in 1787. He discovered the law of the superposition of stratified rocks, though he wrongly considered volcanic rocks, such as basalt, to be of aqueous origin, being as he supposed formed of chemical precipitates from water. But he was the first to state that the age of different forma- tions can be told by their fossils, certain species being confined to particular beds, while others ranged throughout whole formations, and others seemed to occur in several different formations; “the original species found in these formations appearing to have been so constituted as to live through a variety of changes which had destroyed hundreds of other species which we find confined to particular beds.” * His views as regards fossils, as Jameson states, were probably not known to Cuvier, and it is more than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed that fossils appear first in “ transition” or palzozoic strata, and were mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the re- mains of birds and quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land plants. His studies led him -to infer that the fossils con- tained in the oldest rocks are very different from any of the species of the present time; that the newer the formation, the more do the remains approach in form * Jameson’s Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, New York, 1818. LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY 99 to the organic beings of the present creation, and that in the very latest formations, fossil remains of species now existing occur. Such advanced views as these would seem to entitle Werner to rank as one of the founders of palzontology.* Hutton’s Theory of the Earth appeared in 1785, and in a more developed state, as a separate work, in 1795.+ “The ruins of an older world,” he said, “are visible in the present structure of our planet, and the strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of the waste of preéxisting continents. The same forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechan- ical violence, even the hardest rocks, and transport- ing the materials to the sea, where they are spread out and form strata analogous to those of more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the bottom of the ocean, they became afterwards altered and consolidated by volcanic heat, and were then heaved up, fractured, and contorted.” Again he said: “In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” As Lyell re. marks: “ Hutton imagined that the continents were first gradually destroyed by aqueous degradation, and when their ruins had furnished materials for new * J. G. Lehmann of Berlin, in 1756, first formally stated that there was some regular succession in the strata, his observations being based on profiles of the Hartz and the Erzgebirge. He proposed the names Zechstein, Kupferschiefer, rothes Todtliegendes, which still linger in German treatises. G. C. Fuchsel (1762) wrote on the stratigraphy of the coal measures, the Permian and the later systems