THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



Europe, visiting museums and universities, and send- 

 ing great collections of ores, minerals, and botanical 

 seeds and specimens to Paris which he afterwards 

 arranged and classified. The organization of the Jar- 

 din du Roi was not effective, and in 1793 the new 

 Museum d'Histoire Naturelle was created by the Na- 

 tional Convention. Lamarck took an active part in 

 this reorganization, and the plans finally adopted 

 were so satisfactory that they are still in force. It was 

 natural to expect that he would have been put in 

 charge of the section of botany, but this work was as- 

 signed to Desfontaines. To Lamarck fell the pro- 

 fessorship of invertebrate zoology which was at that 

 time an almost unknown branch of zoology. At the 

 age of fifty and after twenty-five years of work in 

 botany, Lamarck took up this new work with the 

 greatest vigour. He made the subject, which really 

 includes about nine-tenths of the animal kingdom, 

 a real science, arranging the collections, inventing a 

 new method of classification, and connecting the or- 

 ders of living species with the pal aeon tological speci- 

 mens of past forms. In both the fields of this zoology 

 and of palaeontology^ he soon attained a commanding 

 authority. As a result of this work he planned and 

 published a great treatise on the Systcme des animaux 

 satis vertebres. A preliminary sketch of this monu- 

 mental monograph was published in 1801 and is 

 notable as the first indication that he had changed his 

 life-long conviction as a special creationist to that of 



C 170 3 



