INTRODUCTION. 



§ I. Life. 



Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet de Lamarck 

 was born on Aug. 1st, 1744, at Bazantin, a village in Picardy, 

 now known as the Department of the Somme. He was 

 the eleventh and youngest child of his parents, and belonged 

 to a family of nobility which had for generations past been 

 devoted to military pursuits. A number of his brothers 

 carried on the family tradition by entering the French 

 army ; but Jean himself was destined by his father for an 

 ecclesiastical career, and was entered as a student at the 

 Jesuit College at Amiens. Yet he himself had no inclination 

 to the calling desired by his father ; and on the death of 

 the latter in 1760, he made immediate use of his new liberty 

 to leave the Jesuit College and join the French army, which 

 was then in Germany, near the end of the Seven Years' War. 

 He bought a horse and rode through France and part of 

 Germany, until he reached the French lines on the eve of 

 the Battle of Fissingshausen. He carried with him a letter 

 of introduction to the colonel of one of the infantry regiments ; 

 and on the following morning placed himself in a company 

 of Grenadiers. The battle of Fissingshausen was fought and 

 lost : the French retreated : all the officers of Lamarck's 

 company were killed, and the command fell upon him. His 

 courage was such that his colonel took him that very evening 

 to the Field-Marshal, by whom he was appointed an officer .^ 



^ This at least is the story told by all Lamarck's biographers. I venture nevertheless 

 to suggest that it can hardly be accepted in the unquestioning way usually followed. 

 The story is founded upon Cuvier's Eloge de M. de Lamarck, and that again is doubtless 



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