390 



HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



i 



the Invertebrata, involved avast amount of work with lenses and micro- 

 scopes, and this, it is said, occasioned such a strain upon his eyes, 

 that they began to fail, and ultimately he lost his sight altogether. 

 To add to his misfortune, his early savings were lost by some unfor- 

 tunate investments, and, having now only his small salary on which to 

 depend, his position became, it is feared, one of comparative poverty. 

 He passed the last ten years of his life in a state of total blindness, 

 but tended by the affectionate care of his two daughters. Lamarck 

 died on the i8th of December, 1829, at the age of eighty-five years. 

 The amount of work he had accomplished in his own department may 



FIG. 179. THE DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS. 



be judged by the circumstance, that when he died the number of known 

 invertebrate animals had been so increased by his researches, that it 

 became necessary to divide the department between two professors. 



As the views advanced in Lamarck's " Zoological Philosophy" have 

 in recent times become very prominent, and have had no little influ- 

 ence on scientific thought, although they attracted comparatively little 

 notice at the time they were first given to the world, it will be proper 

 to place those views before the reader.. Lamarck begins his work by 

 asserting that all the divisions which have been established between 

 the various productions of nature. are essentially artificial ; that is, that 

 nature produces the individuals without regard to distribution into 

 genera, species, etc. It is necessary for us to distinguish by some order 



