io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tioD, betook himself on a poor horse to the army, which was encamped 

 near Lippstadt, in Westphalia. lie was furnished with a letter of 

 introduction from Frau von Laraeth, proprietor of a neighboring es- 

 tate, to Colonel de Lastic, of the Beaujolais regiment. This officer, 

 when he saw the seventeen-year-old youth, who looked much younger, 

 sent him to his quarters. A battle took place on the next day. M. de 

 Lastic drew up his regiment, and noticed his protege in the front 

 rank of a company of grenadiers. The French army was under the 

 command of Marshal Broglie and Prince Soubise while the allied 

 troops were commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The 

 two French officers, -who did not agree together, were killed. The 

 company Lamarck had joined was broken up by the enemy's fire, 

 and was forgotten in the confusion of the retreat. The officers and 

 under-officers were killed, and only fourteen were left standing. The 

 oldest of these counseled retreat ; Lamarck, who had, on the spur of 

 the moment, improvised himself to the command, answered : " We 

 have been assigned to this position, and we must not forsake it till we 

 are relieved." The colonel, who now remarked that the company was 

 not with his regiment, recalled it by an order which he managed to 

 get back to it by a secret way. On the next day Lamarck was ap- 

 pointed an officer, and soon afterward a lieutenant. Fortunately for 

 science, this brilliant beginning of a military career was not decisive 

 of the future of the youth. After the conclusion of peace he per- 

 formed garrison duty in Toulon and Monaco, till an inflammation of 

 the lymphatic glands of the neck made it necessary for him to go to 

 Paris to undergo an operation by Tenon, the scar of which he carried 

 all his life. 



The aspect of the vegetation in the neighborhood of Toulon and Mo- 

 naco had attracted the attention of the young officer, who had already 

 acquired some knowledge of botany from the " Traite des plantes 

 usuelles " of Chomel. After he withdrew from the military service 

 and had been awarded a modest pension of four hundred francs, he 

 became engaged with a banker in Paris. Moved by an irresistible 

 impulse to the study of Nature, he observed from his attic-room the 

 forms and movements of the clouds, and made himself acquainted with 

 plants in the royal gardens, and by means of botanical excursions. He 

 felt that he was on the right way, and recalled Voltaire's judgment 

 on Condorcet, that discoveries to come would secure him more fame 

 with posterity than a company of soldiers. Dissatisfied with the bo- 

 tanical systems in use, he wrote in a half-year his " Flore francaise," 

 and published his " Cle dichotomique," by the aid of which it is easy 

 for a beginner to ascertain the name of the plants he is accustomed to 

 see. This was in 1778. Through Rousseau botany became a fashiona- 

 ble study ; the lords and ladies of the world of society busied them- 

 selves with plants ; Buffon had the three volumes of the " Flore fran- 

 chise" published at the Royal Printing-House ; and in the next year 



