REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 25 
of botany; an office for giving information, the dis- 
tribution of seeds, etc.—all the resources already so 
varied, as well as the facilities for work at the Jardin, 
passed successively in review before the representa- 
tives of the country, and the address ended in a 
modest request to the Assembly that its author be 
allowed a few days to offer some observations regard- 
ing the future organization of this great institution. 
The Assembly, adopting the wise views announced 
in the manifest which had been presented by the offi- 
cers of the Jardin and Cabinet, sent the address to 
the Committee, and gave a month’s time to the 
petitioners to prepare and present a plan and regula- 
tions which should establish the organization of their 
establishment. * 
It was in 1790 that the decisive step was taken by 
the officers of the Royal Garden+ and Cabinet of 
* Hamy, l.c., p. 31; also Pieces /ustificatives, Nos. 11 e¢ 12, pp. 
g7-tor. The Intendant of the Garden was completely ignored, and his 
unpopularity and inefficiency led to his resignation. But meanwhile, 
in his letter to Condorcet, the perpetual Secretary of the Institute of 
Trance, remonstrating against the proposed suppression by the As- 
sembly of the place of Intendant, he partially retracted his action 
against Lamarck, saying that Lamarck’s work, ‘‘ peut étre utile, mais 
west pas absolutement nécessaire.” ‘The Intendant, as Hamy adds, 
knew well the value of the services rendered by Lamarck at the Royal 
Garden, and that, as a partial recompense, he had been appointed 
botanist to the museum. He also equally well knew that the author 
of the lore Francaise was in a most precarious situation and sup- 
ported on his paltry salary a family of seven persons, as he was al- 
ready at this time married and had five children. ‘* But his own 
place was in peril, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice the poor savant 
whom he had himself installed as keeper of the herbarium,” (Hamy, 
l. c., pp. 34, 35.) 
+ The first idea of the foundation of the Jardin dates from 1626, 
but the actual carrying out of the conception was in 1635. The first 
act of installation took place in 1640. Gui de la Brosse, in order to 
please his high protectors, the first physicians of the king, named his 
establishment Jardin des Plantes Medicinales. It was renovated by 
Fagon, who was born in the Jardin, and whose mother was the niece 
