LAMARCK BY DR. GACHET (Photogravure) _Frontispiece_

FACING
PAGE

BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FRONT VIEW }
} 4
BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK " " }

ACT OF BIRTH 6

AUTOGRAPH OF LAMARCK, JANUARY 25, 1802 10

LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS 20

BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW FROM THE WEST }
} 42
MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS, }
1793-1829 }

PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK, WHEN OLD AND BLIND, IN THE
COSTUME OF A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE. ENGRAVED
IN 1824 54

PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK 180

MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED, 1793-1829 198

E. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE 212

LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION. HIS LIFE AND 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 acceptance.

The author of the _Flore Francaise_ will never be forgotten by his
countrymen, who called him the French Linne; and he who wrote the
_Animaux sans Vertebres_ at once took the highest rank as the leading
zooelogist 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 and boldness in
speculation, and soundness in reasoning 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 zooelogical philos