42 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
fore 1801, however much he may have brooded over 
the matter, we have no utterances in print on the 
transformation theory. His studies on the lower 
animals, and his general knowledge of the vertebrates 
derived from the work of his contemporaries and his 
observations in the Museum and menagerie, gave him 
a broad grasp of the entire animal kingdom, such as 
no one before him had. As the result, his compre- 
hensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, 
enabled him to appreciate the series from monad (his 
ébauche) to man, the range of forms from the simple 
to the complex. Even though not a comparative 
anatomist like Cuvier, he made use of the latter’s 
discoveries, and could understand and appreciate the 
gradually increasing complexity of forms; and, unlike 
Cuvier, realize that they were blood relations, and 
not separate, piece-meal creations. Animal life, so 
immeasurably higher than vegetable forms, with its 
highly complex physiological functions and varied 
means of reproduction, and the relations of its forms 
to each other and to the world around, affords facts 
for evolution which were novel to Lamarck, the 
descriptive botanist. 
In accordance with the rules of the Museum, which 
required that all the professors should be lodged 
within the limits of the Jardin, the choice of lodgings 
being given to the oldest professors, Lamarck, at the 
time of his appointment, took up his abode in the 
house now known as the Maison de Buffon, situated 
on the opposite side of the Jardin des Plantes from 
the house afterwards inhabited by Cuvier, and in the 
angle between the Galerie de Zoologie and the Museum 
