6 Cuvier'^s Biographical Memoir of M, de Lamarck, 



plied in all methods of arrangement, and even forms the necesi 

 sary foundation of them, but modern authors, for the sake of 

 brevity, have attempted to present many ramifications together. 

 M. de Lamarck, in imitation of some of the old botanists, deve- 

 loped and expressed them all, representing them by accolades, 

 in such a manner that the most uninstructed reader, without any 

 initiatory labour, by taking him for a guide, may suppose him- 

 self to be a botanist. His book appeared at a time when botany 

 had become a popular science, the example of J. J. Rousseau, and 

 the enthusiasm which he inspired, having even caused it to be 

 studied by ladies and people of fashion ; the success of the work 

 was therefore rapid. M. de BufFon, not perhaps unwilling to 

 shew by this example how easily systems, on which he set so 

 little value, could be framed, and at the same time their indif- 

 ferent consequence, used his interest to have the Flore Franjaise 

 printed by the royal press. A place having become open in the 

 botanical department of the Academy of Sciences, and M. de 

 Lamarck being presented in the second rank, the Minister caused 

 it to be given to him by the King in 1775, in preference (a thing 

 almost unexampled,) to M. Descemet, who was presented first, 

 and who has never been able, during a long life, to recover the 

 station of which the preference deprived him. In short, the 

 poor officer, so little regarded since the commencement of the 

 peace, all of a sudden attained to the good fortune, always of 

 rare occurrence, and particularly so then, of being at the same 

 time an object of favour with the court and with the public. 

 The partiality of M. de Buffbn obtained for him another advan- 

 tage. When his son was about to set out on his travels, after 

 finishing his studies, M. de Buffon proposed to M. de Lamarck 

 to accompany him ; and not wishing that the latter should ap- 

 pear merely in the character of a preceptor, he procured for him 

 the commission of botanist to the King, for the purpose of visit- 

 ing foreign gardens and cabinets, and opening a correspondence 

 between them and similar establishments in Paris. In conse- 

 quence of this he travelled in company with the younger Buffon 

 during part of the years 1781 and 1782, through Holland, Ger- 

 many, and Hungary ; visited Gleditsch at Berlin, Jacquin at 

 Vienna, Murray at Goettingen, and obtained an idea of the mag- 

 nificent establishments devoted to botany in many foreign coun- 



