REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 29 
tion and of Finances to at once make a report on the 
new organization of the administration of the Jardin 
des Plantes. 
Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired 
into the condition and needs of the establishment ; 
Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure of 1790, 
written by Lamarck. The next day Lakanal, after a 
short conference with his colleagues of the Committee 
of Public Instruction, read in the tribune a short report 
and a decree which the Committee adopted without 
discussion. 
Their minds were elsewhere, for grave news had 
come in from all quarters. The Austrians were 
bombarding Valenciennes, the Prussians had invested 
Mayence, the Spanish were menacing Perpignan, and 
bands of Vendeans had seized Saumur after a bloody 
battle; while at Caen, at Evreux, at Bordeaux, at 
Marseilles, and elsewhere, muttered the thunders of 
the outbreaks provoked by the proscription of the 
Girondins. So that under these alarming conditions 
Congress voted him five hundred acres of land. The government of 
Louisiana offered him the presidency of its university, which, however, 
he did not accept. In 1825 he went to live on the shores of Mobile 
Bay on land which he purchased from the proceeds of the sale of the 
land given him by Congress. Here he became a pioneer and planter. 
In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and 
offered his services to the new government, but received no answer 
and was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the ini- 
tiative of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reélection 
to the French Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. 
He lived in retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his 
death in 1845 in writing a book entitled Sour d’un Alembre de 
LInstitut de France aux Etats-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans. The 
manuscript mysteriously disappeared, no trace of it ever having been 
found. (Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universel, Art. LAKANAL.) 
His bust now occupies a prominent place among those of other great 
men in the French Academy of Sciences. 
