BIRTH, VOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 3 
bore adverse criticisms, ridicule, forgetfulness, and 
inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his 
theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to 
his dying day. 
The biography of such a character is replete with 
interest, and the memory of his unselfish and fruitful 
devotion to science should be forever cherished. His 
life was also notable for the fact that after his fiftieth 
year he took up and mastered a new science; and at 
a period when many students of literature and science 
cease to be productive and rest from their labors, he 
accomplished the best work of his life—work which 
has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a 
philosophic biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism com- 
prises the fundamental principles of evolution, and 
will always have to be taken into consideration in 
accounting for the origin, not only of species, but 
especially of the higher groups, such as orders, classes, 
and phyla. 
This striking personage in the history of biological 
science, who has made such an ineffaceable impres- 
sion on the philosophy of biology, certainly demands 
more than a brief c/oge to keep alive his memory. 
Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier 
de Lamarck, was born August I, 1744, at Bazentin- 
le-Petit. This little village is situated in Picardy, or 
what is now the Department of the Somme, in the 
Arrondissement de Péronne, Canton d’Albert, a little 
more than four miles from Albert, between this town 
and Bapaume, and near Longueval, the nearest post- 
office to Bazentin. The village of Bazentin-le-Grand, 
