Cuvier's Biographical Memoir ofM. de Lamarck, S 



flections, however, and the contemplations wliich he delighted 

 to indulge, afforded him consolation, and when he found an op- 

 portunity of communicating his ideas to some friend, of discuss- 

 ing them, and defending them against objections, the real world 

 was nothing to him ; his warmth made him forget all his diffi- 

 culties. It is in this way that many men have passed their 

 youth, who have become the lights of the world. Too often is 

 genius born to poverty ; but there is in it a principle of resist- 

 ance against misfortune, and adversity is perhaps the surest test 

 by which it can be tried. Never ought the most unfortunate of 

 young men to forget, that Linnaeus was preparing himself to 

 become the reformer of Natural History, at the time when he 

 was patching up for his own use the cast-ofF shoes of his com- 

 panions. 



At last, after having occupied (en years in preparing himself, 

 M. de Lamarck made himself suddenly known, both to the world 

 and men of science, by a work on a new plan, and executed in a 

 manner full of interest. 



He had been for a long time accustomed, when collecting 

 plants, or visiting the Jardin du Roi, to engage in warm discus- 

 sions with his fellow students on the imperfections of all the 

 systems of arrangement then in vogue, and to maintain how easy 

 it would be to form one which would lead with greater ease and 

 certainty to the determination of plants. His friends in some 

 measure defied him to the task ; he immediately set about prov- 

 ing his assertion, and after six months of unremitting labour,, 

 finished his " Flore Fran9aise."* This work has no pretensions 

 to add to the number of species previously known as indigenous 

 to France, nor even to give a more complete history of them. 

 It is merely a guide which, by setting out from the most gene- 

 ral forms, dividing and subdividing always by two, and only 

 allowing the choice between two opposite characters, conducts 

 the reader, however little he may understand descriptive lan- 

 guage, as it were by the hand, with certainty, and even amuse- 

 ment, to the determination of the plant of which he desires the 

 name. This kind of dichotomy or continual bifurcation, is im- 



• Flore Franjaise, ou description succincte des toutes les Plantes qui 

 croissent naturellement en France. 3 vols, in 8vo, Paris, 1778. 



