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."

During this decade (1793-1803) and the one succeeding, Lamarck's mind
grew and expanded. Before 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
comprehensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, enabled him
to appreciate the series from monad (his _ebauche_) 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.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW, FROM THE WEST]

[Illustration: MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS.
1793-1829]

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 and the Museum library.[37] With little
doubt the windows of his study, where his earlier addresses, the
_Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivans_, and the _Philosophie
Zoologique_, 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