22 MEMOIR OF LAMARCK. 



commenced at college, and soon showed a prefer- 

 ence for certain departments of natural history. He 

 delighted to engage in controversial discussions on 

 these subjects with his companions, and to indulge 

 in speculations respecting the most abstruse points 

 in physics and the phenomena of the natural world. 

 It is not improbable that it was about this time, 

 when the wide and varied fields of science were 

 just beginning to open to his view, that he con- 

 ceived some of those crude and fanciful notions 

 which characterise so many of his theoretical views. 

 It is less a matter of surprise that such ideas should 

 suggest themselves, at the outset of his career, to one 

 of his ardent temperament and lively imagination, 

 than that he should have persisted in maintaining 

 them when his knowledge was more extended and 

 his judgment matured, although in the opinion of 

 almost every other person their fallacy appeared 

 demonstrable. 



Botany and meteorology were the branches on 

 which he first bestowed the greatest degree of 

 attention. Even before he left the army, he had 

 become attached to the former ; and during his stay 

 at Monaco, had examined the singular vegetation 

 of that rocky country. During his illness, he was 

 lodged, for the sake of economy, in an apartment at 

 the top of a high house, from which the clouds 

 formed almost the only spectacle; and to relieve 

 the tedium of his long solitude, he was accustomed 

 to watch their varying forms and aspects, and care- 

 fully to observe all the other atmospheric pheno- 



