SKETCH OF LAMARCK. 109 



always has time enough at its disposal ; time is a means of unlimited 

 capacity, through which it produces the greatest as well as the smallest 

 effects." 



He was the first who distinguished the littoral fossils from the deep- 

 sea fossils. Yet no one will to-day accept his idea that the sea, by force 

 of its ebb and flow, could have hollowed out its bed and changed its 

 local position on the surface of the earth without altering the relative 

 level of the different points on the surface. In view of recognized 

 facts, it is impossible to ascribe the origin of all the valleys to the 

 wear of the waters. Just as Lamarck's conclusions in the science 

 of organic beings, which he knew so well, were sharp-sighted and pro- 

 phetic, so were they, in the sciences which were strange to him, care- 

 less, hazardous, and destined to be contradicted in the future. Like 

 the metaphysicians, he built in the air, and his structure, like theirs, 

 fell for want of a firm foundation. Limited by his lectures in the 

 Museum, and by the duty of classifying the collections to a definite 

 scientific work, he devoted himself entirely to this double object. In 

 1802 he published his " Considerations sur I'organisation des corps 

 vivants " (Considerations on the Organization of Living Bodies) ; in 

 1809, his " Philosophic Zoologique " (" Zoological Philosophy "), an ex- 

 pansion of the "Considerations," and from 1816 to 1822 the "Histoire 

 naturelle des animaux sans vert^bres " (" Natural History of the Inver- 

 tebrate Animals "), in seven volumes. This was his principal work, and, 

 as it was exclusively descriptive and systematic, it was received by the 

 learned world with great favor. His paper on the fossil mollusks of 

 the neighborhood of Paris, in which his profound knowledge of living 

 mollusks permitted him to make an accurate classification of those re- 

 mains of animals that had laid for thousands of years in the bosom of 

 the earth, was likewise well received. 



Lamarck had begun his zoological work when fifty years old. The 

 painstaking study of minute animals, visible only through the lens and 

 the microscope, wore upon his eyesight, which grew feebler and fee- 

 bler till he became totally blind. Four times married, the father of 

 seven children, he saw his little inheritance, and also his earlier sav- 

 ings, disappear in one of those high-sounding speculations with which 

 a credulous public is often deluded. His modest salary as a professor 

 only kept him from want. The friends of science, whom his fame as 

 a zoologist attracted to him, were shocked when they observed in 

 what neglect he lived. He spent the last years of his life in total 

 darkness, but comforted by the loving care of his two daughters. The 

 elder daughter wrote at his dictation a part of the sixth, and some of 

 the seventh, volume of his "History of the Invertebrates." After the 

 father could not leave his room, the daughter would not go out of 

 the house ; and, when she did at last go out, she could not endure the 

 open air from which she had been excluded so long. Lamarck died 

 on the 18th of December, 1829, at the age of eighty-five years. 



