28 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion 
to refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering 
way, which may have both amused and disgusted 
him. 
But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing 
to a close, and a new era in French natural science, 
signalized by the reorganization of the Jardin and 
Cabinet under the name of the Muséum d’Histotre 
Naturelle, was dawning. On the 6th of February, 
1.793, the National Convention, at the request of 
Lakanal,* ordered the Committees of Public Instruc- 
and also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system 
of Linné in the arrangement of the herbarium, added: ‘‘ However, 
desirous of retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the posi- 
tion which he needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after 
several conversations with the older officers of the Jardin, I have believed 
that, M. Desfontaines being charged with the botanical lectures in the 
school, and M. Jussieu in the neighborhood of Paris, it would be well 
to send M. La Marck to herborize in some parts of the kingdom, in 
order to complete the French flora, as this will be to his taste, and at 
the same time very useful to the progress of botany; thus everybody 
will be employed and satisfied.”—Perrier, Lamarck et le Transform- 
tsme Actuel, pp. 13,14. (Copied from the National Archives.) ‘‘ The 
life of Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as irregular as 
that of his friend and master [Rousseau]. But his character was 
essentially crafty and selfish, like that of many other sentimentalists 
of the first order.” (Morley’s Rowsseau, p. 437, footnote.) 
* Joseph Lakanal was born in 1762, and died in 1845. Hewas a 
professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the 
faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative 
(député) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational 
questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and 
elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving 
from a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific 
institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for 
the death of Louis XVI. 
Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Insti- 
tute, what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with 
designating the first forty-eight members, who should elect all the 
others. He was by the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as 
a regicide at the second restoration, he sailed for the United States, 
where he was warmly welcomed by Jefferson. The United States 
