1 62 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



bedded. In some nests were three and in others 

 five eggs of large size and pale olive colour, as 

 smooth and glossy as if varnished over. The nests 

 are built on the beach among the loose pebbles, 

 not far from the water. The ducks sit very close, 

 nor will they rise until you almost tread upon 

 them. We robbed the nests of some down, and 

 found that the down of one only weighs three 

 quarters of an ounce, but was so elastic as to fill 

 the crown of a hat." 



Pennant deserved good health and had it, for, 

 except when old age came on, he was a singularly 

 healthy man. He died in 1798, at the age of 

 seventy-two years. 



Jean Baptiste Antoine de Monet, also called the 

 Chevalier de Lamarck, was born at Bazantin, a 

 village of Picardy, on April ist, 1744. He was 

 the eleventh child of Pierre de Monet, the principal 

 person of the neighbourhood, whose small estate 

 was disproportionate to his huge family. But the 

 Church was a resource for such families, and occa- 

 sionally its great prizes were taken by the younger 

 members of noble houses. So M. de Monet deter- 

 mined to prepare his son, at an early age, for this 

 hopeful future, and sent him to the Jesuit College 

 at Amiens. However, the inclinations of the child 

 were not those which made it probable that he 

 would succeed in the direction which his father had 

 chosen for him. Everything around the boy, at 

 home, was quite opposed to a clerical career. For 

 centuries his ancestors had carried arms, and his 



