176 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
and after travelling by order of the government in 
different parts of Europe, he undertook on a vast 
scale a general work on botany. 
“This work comprised two distinct features. In 
the first (Le Dictionnaire), which made a part of the 
new encyclopedia, the citizen Lamarck treats of phi- 
losophical botany, also giving the complete descrip- 
tion of all the genera and species known. An 
immense work from the labor it cost, and truly 
onginal im its execution. :/.)).. (he second treatise, 
entitled //ustration des Genres, presents in the order 
of the sexual system the figures and the details of all 
the genera known in botany, and with a concise ex- 
position of the generic characters and of the species 
known. This work, unique of its kind, already con- 
tains six hundred plates executed by the best artists, 
and will comprise nine hundred. Also for more than 
ten years the citizen Lamarck has employed in Paris 
a great number of artists. Moreover, he has kept 
running three separate presses for different works, all 
relating to natural history.” 
Cuvier in his Z/oge also adds: 
“Tt is astonishing that M.de Lamarck, who hitherto 
had been studying botany as an amateur, was able so 
rapidly to qualify himself to produce so extensive a 
work, in which the rarest plants were described. It is 
because, from the moment he undertook it, with all 
the enthusiasm of his nature, he collected them from 
the gardens and examined them in all the available 
herbaria; passing the days at the houses of the botan- 
ists he knew, but chiefly at the home of M. de Jussieu, 
in that home where for more than a century a scientific 
hospitality welcomed with equal kindness every one 
who was interested in the delightful study of botany. 
