STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 19 
botany under Bernard de Jussieu, for ten years gave 
unremitting attention to this science, and especially 
to a study of the French flora. 
Cuvier states that the ‘lore Francaise appeared 
after “six months of unremitting labor.” However 
this may be, the results of over nine preceding years 
of study, gathered together, written, and printed 
within the brief period of half a year, was no hasty 
tour de force, but a well-matured, solid work which for 
many years remained a standard one. 
It brought him immediate fame. It appeared at a 
fortunate epoch. The example of Rousseau and the 
general enthusiasm he inspired had made the study 
of flowers very popular—* une scrence a la mode,” as 
Cuvier says—even among many ladies and in the 
world of fashion, so that the new work of Lamarck, 
though published in three octavo volumes, had a 
rapid success. 
The preface was written by Daubenton.* Buffon 
also took much interest in the work, opposing as it 
did the artificial system of Linné, for whom he had, 
for other reasons, no great degree of affection. (He 
obtained the privilege of having the work published 
at the royal printing office at the expense of the 
government, and the total proceeds of the sale of the 
volumes were given to the author. This elaborate 
* Since 1742, the keeper and demonstrator of the Cabinet, who 
shared with Thouin, the chief gardener, the care of the Royal Gar- 
dens. Daubenton was at that time the leading anatomist of France, 
and after Buffon’s death he gathered around him all the scientific men 
who demanded the transformation of the superannuated and incom- 
plete Jardin du Roi, and perhaps initiated the movement which resulted 
five years later in the creation of the present Museum of Natural His- 
tonves(Eiamiy, lec. ipa £2.) 
