Cuvier''s Biographical Memoir ofM. de L&marck, 9 



and related to M. de Lamarck*'s family, created for him the pal- 

 try place of keeper of the herbaria in the king''s cabinet ; a place 

 of which he was continually on the point of being deprived, for 

 strong opposition was made to its establishment, and the National 

 Assembly was even required to suppress it, as I learn from two 

 pamphlets which he was obliged to publish in its defence. If 

 he obtained some years afterwards a less precarious means of 

 support, it was only to be attained by again changing his voca- 

 tion. 



In 1793, the King''s Garden and Cabinet were re-established, 

 under the title of Museum of Natural History. All the supe- 

 rior functionaries were appointed professors, and charged with 

 the superintendence of those departments most in unison with 

 their preceding employments or personal studies. M. de La- 

 marck, being the last appointed, had to content himself with the 

 branch not selected by the others, and was nominated to the chair 

 relating to the two last classes of the animal kingdom, according 

 to the Linnean division, — those, namely, which were then called 

 Insects and Worms. He was at that time nearly fifty years of 

 age, and the only preparatory knowledge which he possessed of 

 this vast department of zoology, consisted of some acquaintance 

 with shells, which he had often studied with Bruguiere, and of 

 which he had made a small collection. But his former couraoe 

 did not desert him ; he began the study of these new objects with 

 unremitting ardour. Availing himself of the aid of some of his 

 friends, and applying, at least to all that related to shells and 

 corals, that sagacity which a long exercise had given him in re- 

 ference to plants, he laboured so successfully in this new field of 

 inquiry, that his works on those animals will confer on his name 

 perhaps a more lasting reputation than all that he has published 

 on botany. Before we give an analysis of these, however, we 

 have first to speak of other writings, which will not probably 

 enjoy the same advantage. 



During the thirty years which had elapsed since the peace of 

 1763, all his time had not been occupied with botany. In the 

 long solitudes to which his restricted circumstances confined him, 

 all the great questions which for ages had fixed the attention of 

 men, passed through his mind. He had meditated on the ge- 

 neral laws of physics and chemistry, on the phenomena of the 



