LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST 177 
When any one reached Paris with plants he might be 
sure that the first one who should visit him would be 
M. de Lamarck; this eager interest was the means of 
his receiving one of the most valuable presents he could 
have desired. The celebrated traveller Sonnerat, having 
returned in 1781 for the second time from the Indies, 
with very rich collections of natural history, imagined 
that every one who cultivated this science would flock 
to him; it was not at Pondichéry or in the Moluccas 
that he had conceived an idea of the vortex which too 
often in this capital draws the savants as well as men 
of the world; no one came but M. de Lamarck, and 
Sonnerat, in his chagrin, gave him the magnificent col- 
lection of plants which he had brought. He profited 
also by that of Commerson, and by those which had 
been accumulated by M. de Jussieu, and which were 
generously opened to him.” 
These works were evidently planned and carried out 
on a broad and comprehensive scale, with originality 
of treatment, and they were most useful and widely 
used. Lamarck’s original special botanical papers were 
numerous. They were mostly descriptive of new species 
and genera, but some were much broader in scope and 
were published over a period of ten years, from 1784 to 
1794, and appeared in the Journal ad’ Histotre naturelle, 
which he founded, and in the Wémotres of the Acad- 
emy of Sciences. 
He discussed the shape or aspect of the plants char- 
acteristic of certain countries, while his last botanical 
effort was on the sensibility of plants (1708). 
Although not in the front rank of botanists, com- 
pared with Linné, Jussieu, De Candolle, and others, yet 
during the twenty-six years of his botanical career it 
may safely be said that Lamarck gave an immense 
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