STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 7 
At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet 
village * near Paris, and there for a year they studied 
together science and history. And now happened an 
event which proved to be the turning point, or rather 
gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck’s career 
and decided his vocation in life. In one of their 
walks they met the philosopher and sentimentalist, 
Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about La- 
marck’s acquaintance with this genius, for all the de- 
tails of his life, both in his early and later years, are 
pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had attended 
at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, 
having by good fortune met Rousseau, he probably 
improved the acquaintance, and, found by Rousseau 
to be a congenial spirit, he was soon invited to ac- 
company him in his herborizations. 
Still more recently Professor Giard + has unearthed 
from the works of Rousseau the following statement 
by him regarding species: “ Est-ce qu’A proprement 
parler il n’existerait point d’espéces dans la nature, 
* Was this quiet place in the region just out of Paris possibly 
near Mont Valérien? He must have been about twenty-two years 
old when he met Rousseau and began to study botany seriously. His 
Flore Francaise appeared in 1778, when he was thirty-four years old. 
Rousseau, at the end of his checkered life, from 1770 to 1778, lived 
in Paris. He often botanized in the suburbs; and Mr. Morley, in 
his Rowsseau, says that ‘‘one of his greatest delights was to watch 
Mont Valerien in the sunset” (p. 436). Rousseau died in Paris in 
1778. That Rousseau expressed himself vaguely in favor of evolu- 
tion is stated by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who quotes a ‘‘ Phrase, 
malheureusement un peuambigué, gui semble montrer, dans se grand 
écrivain, un partisan de plus de la variabilité du type.” (Résumé 
des Vues sur Vespece organique, p. 18, Paris, 1889.) The passage is 
quoted in Geoffroy’s Histoire Naturelle Générale des Regnes organiques, 
ii., ch. I., p. 271. I have been unable to verify this quotation. 
+ Lecon d’ Ouverture du Cours del’ Evolution des Etres organtsés, 
Paris, 1888. 
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