PSYCHE 
[April 
PROFESSOR PACKARD'S “LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK.” 
BY ROBERT T. JACKSON. 
The late Professor Packard laid naturalists under deep obligations by his 
full and painstaking Life of Lamarck, the only adequate account of the great 
French naturalist. Professor Packard gives all that he could gather by careful 
search in regard to his family and early life, his struggles with poverty, his activ- 
ities in numerous lines of scientific work, and a careful consideration of what he 
accomplished in these several lines. The relations of Lamarck to his contemp- 
oraries in his work and thought is forcibly brought out and numerous e.xtracts 
from Lamarck’s writings show what his views were on phj^sical and biological 
problems, especially evolution. The book is full of evidences of a loving care 
and reverence for the great master and effort to do full credit to him for his 
advanced views and what he accomplished. 
In respect for Professor Packard’s memory it is of interest to record here 
some of the leading features he brought out in his life of Lamarck, which from the 
human and scientific aspects should be of e.vceptional interest to all biologists. 
The Life of Lamarck is the old old story of a man of genius who lived 
far in advance of his age, and died comparatu'ely unappreciated and neglected. 
The factors of evolution as stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many really 
comprise the primary or foundation principles, or initiative causes, of the origin 
of life-forms. 
Lamarck was born i .August 1744, and died in Paris 28 December 1S29, 
at the age of eighty-five years. The youngest of eleven children, throughout 
his life he struggled with poverty and during the last of his life for some ten 
years was partially, then wholly blind, although married four times he died a 
widower. .A devoted daughter soothed his last years and acting as amanuensis 
gave to the world some of his important publications. 
.As a youth Lamarck entered the army which, owing to. an injury, he 
early abandoned. Music, medicine and science drew his attention and he worked 
in a bank. When twenty-five years of age he devoted himself to botany and 
science thereafter claimed his’entire life. For about twenty-five years he pur- 
sued botany and in 1778 published the E/ore Frnncaise, a three volume work, he 
also published other botanical works and was connected with the Jardin des 
Plantes as Keeper of the herbarium. 
