vi PREFACE 
and the brief notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, 
and Bourguin, there is no special biography, however 
brief, except a brochure of thirty-one pages, reprinted 
from a few scattered articles by the distinguished 
anthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in the fourth 
and last volume of a little-known journal, 7’ Homme, 
entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, 
ses Disciples, Paris, 1887. This exceedingly rare 
pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mor- 
tillet, with the assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. 
A. Mondiére, who with others, under the leadership 
of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a Réunzon 
Lamarck and a Diner Lamarck, to maintain and 
perpetuate the memory of the great French trans- 
formist. Owing to their efforts, the exact date of 
Lamarck’s birth, the house in which he lived during 
his lifetime at Paris, and all that we shall ever know 
of his place of burial have been established. It isa 
lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a 
grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with 
no headstone to mark the site, on one side of a 
row of graves of others better cared for, from which 
trench his bones, with those of others unknown and 
neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the cata- 
combs of Paris. Lamarck left behind him no letters 
or manuscripts; nothing could be ascertained regard- 
ing the dates of his marriages, the names of his wives 
or of all his children. Of his descendants but one is 
known to be living, an officer in the army. But his 
aims in life, his undying love of science, his noble 
character and generous disposition are constantly 
revealed in his writings. 
