320 MisceUaneoufi. 



place the plants in paper for the herbarium. T am glad to say that I 

 never knew any man with even the slightest pretence to being a 

 scientific student living in such a miserable state in this country ; 

 and to me it was a great distress to see two members of the Institute 

 so illustrious as Lamarck and J. C. Savigny, who had done such 

 good work while they had eyes to see, living, when they became 

 blind and feeble by age, in such poverty and distress. To these 

 names I might add a third conchologist, De Montfort ; but his la- 

 bours were small compared to the others', and his state of poverty 

 more abject. The botanists of the Institute are not more fortunate 

 or more cared for. I recollect with sorrow my visit to Louis Claude 

 Richard, the author of the invaluable ' Analyse du Fruit,' and to 

 M. du Petit-Thouars, a botanist who had done good work, and bears 

 a name so celebrated in the naval annals of France. Our scientific 

 men are rarely pensioners of the state, like the members of the In- 

 stitute ; but still they never come to such poverty, or die a lingering 

 death from want of food and Avarmth, and at the same time are free 

 to express any opinion, scientific, religious, or political, that they may 

 conscientiously hold or wish to incnlcate. 



The Baron Benjamin Delcssert purchased Lamarck's private col- 

 lection of shells. When I went to Paris to study the types of the 

 species which Lamarck had described, that I might name the shells 

 in the British Museum with certainty, and also in hopes that I might 

 have time to prepare for the press the work on the species of shells 

 on which I had long been working, M. Delessert, who knew me 

 years before as a botanical student, received me with his usual 

 kindness, and oftered me every facility to study the shells in the 

 Lamarckian collection and make notes on them. I found in this 

 collection species that had greatly puzzled me when, on a previous 

 visit to Paris, I examined the shells as I could see them through 

 the glass cases in the Jardin des Plantes ; for there I observed that 

 several of the specimens that were marked with the names of the 

 new and uufigured species in Lamarck's ' Histoire ' were well-known 

 species, properly named in other parts of the collection ; and I was 

 more surprised when I found, on comparing them with Lamarck's 

 short descriptions, that they could hardly be the specimens from 

 which he had taken his characters. The difficulty was set at rest 

 when I consulted M. Delessert's collection ; for I then found that 

 the shells in Delessert's collection that bore these names were either 

 very distinct species or well-marked varieties, and there could be 

 no doubt that they were the proper types of the Lamarckian 

 species. 



M. Delessert, in 1842, soon after obtaining the Lamarckian col- 

 lection, published a large folio work, with very accurate plates, en- 

 titled " Hecueil desCoquilles decrites par Lamarck dans son ' Histoire 

 Naturelle des Animaux sans Vcrtebres' et non encore figurces," which 

 enabled conchologists to determine with accuracy many Lamarckian 

 species, M. Kiener, who was the curator of the conchological por- 

 tion of M. Delessert's collection, published, under the Baron's sanc- 

 tion and by his pecuniary assistance, the beautiful work entitled 



