20 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
work at once placed young Lamarck in the front rank 
of botanists, and now the first and greatest honor of 
his life came to him. The young lieutenant, disap- 
pointed in a military advancement, won his spurs in 
the field of science. A place in botany had become 
vacant at the Academy of Sciences, and M.de Wa- 
marck having been presented in the second rank (ex 
seconde ligne), the ministry, a thing almost unex- 
ampled, caused him to be given by the king, in 1779, 
the preference over M. Descemet, whose name was 
presented before his, in the first rank, and who since 
then, and during a long life, never could recover 
the place which he unjustly lost.* ‘In a word, the 
poor officer, so neglected since the peace, obtained 
at one stroke the good fortune, always very rare, 
and especially so at that time, of being both the 
recipient ,of ithe favor, ‘of pthe Court wand sof "the 
public.” + 
The interest and affection felt for him by Buffon 
were of advantage to him in another way. Desiring 
to have his son, whom he had planned to be his suc- 
cessor as Intendant of the Royal Garden, and who 
had just finished his studies, enjoy the advantage of 
travel in foreign lands, Buffon proposed to Lamarck to 
go with him as a guide and friend; and, not wishing 
him to appear as a mere teacher, he procured for him, 
in 1781, a commission as Royal Botanist, charged 
* De Mortillet (Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Trans formistes, p. 11) 
states that Lamarck was elected to the Academy at the age of thirty; 
but as he was born in 1744, and the election took place in 1779, he 
must have been thirty-five years of age. 
+ Cuvier’s Eloge, p. viii.; also Revue biographique de la Société 
Matlacologigue, p. 67. 
