January 24, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



153 



finding himself in command of a company of 

 grenadiers — on account of tlie deatli of all of the 

 officers and by virtue of his nobility, fought on in a 

 brilliant action which will be too long to describe, 

 and which earned for him the epaulets of sub- 

 lieutenant on the field of battle. It was a good 

 commencement for his military career; but peace 

 was made soon afterwards and he had to return 

 to France and begin garrison life. I will not con- 

 tinue ; he was forced to sell his grade of lieutenant 

 of infantry on account of a tumor which appeared 

 on his neck. 



It was then that he made a complete change in 

 his career. No, I am mistaken: he first remained 

 for a while with his mother at the paternal manor; 

 this was a time of forced inactivity, which one 

 woiild be glad to drop out of his life. But finally 

 his mother died. He had to sell the estate of 

 Bazantin. There remained to my father only a 

 very meager income. He had to live, he had to 

 make a career. My father went to Paris. He first 

 studied medicine, then abandoned this for botany. 

 This science pleased him, he had a taste for it, 

 he gave himself up to it ardently. One day, as he 

 was walking with other students in the botanical 

 school of the Jardin des Plantes, he laid a wager 

 that he could identify whatever plant was pre- 

 sented him, any one at all, provided they in- 

 formed him in advance the principal characters 

 which distingTiished the fruit (vfigfitaux). He 

 asked, in order to prepare himself, a certain delay, 

 which was granted him, and on the day fixed, in 

 this same school of botany, in the midst of a nu- 

 merous assembly, the trial took place, succeeded, 

 and the wager was won. Such was the origin of 

 the Flore Francaise. The means devised by my 

 father consisted in the successive elimination of 

 two opposed characters, which is the method of 

 dichotomy employed to-day in all classifications 

 of natural history. The success of the Flore 

 Frangaise was truly prodigious. It was printed 

 at the expense of the king and opened to my 

 father the gates of the Academy of Sciences. 



I pass without comment several other works 

 which he published on botany and Avliich put the 

 seal to his reputation as a botanist. To come to 

 those of his works to which he himself attached 

 the greatest value. 



The museum was about to be reorganized. Sev- 

 eral new chairs were added to those already exist- 

 ing. The mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles were 

 given to Gfioffroy Saint-Hilaire and all of the 

 mass of lower animals were given to my father. 

 No on6, Linng excepted, had then thrown light 

 into the chaos formed by these beings. My father 



undertook to disentangle them. He established at 

 once the great distinction which divides the animal 

 kingdom into two classes, vertebrate and inverte- 

 brate. And the latter class, which up to then 

 had been nearly despised, became of such impor- 

 tance, when my father had brought into it the 

 order which remains there at present, that it has 

 been judged too large to be in the charge of a 

 single professor, and it has been made to-day the 

 object of two different chairs. 



It is in his zoological works that the genius of 

 my father had its full scope. To appreciate them 

 properly one should have a knowledge which I do 

 not possess. I can only cite the Philosophie 

 Zoologique and the Eistoire des Animaux sans 

 Vertehres. These are the two monuments which 

 will appeal to posterity from the coldness of his 

 contemporaries. 



Will this appeal ever be heard? I doubt it. 

 Nothing is more difficult to uproot than a pre- 

 conceived opinion. Men are like sheep; they fol- 

 low blindly their leader without inquiring the 

 road where he is leading them. They judge rarely 

 by themselves, and find it most convenient to 

 adopt without examination the judgments which 

 time has given them. 



It seems that this ingratitude of mankind has 

 been the penalty inflicted upon my father for his 

 neglect of the fulfilment of his duties as head of 

 the family. 



I can not deny, indeed, that his conduct in this 

 regard is not reproachless. Undoubtedly it is 

 ideal to devote one's self to science without the 

 slightest regard to worldly ambition or to fortune, 

 but this is the very condition which the interests 

 of the family will not suffer. 



My father was three times married — from the 

 first marriage he had six children, from the second 

 two and from the third none. 



The conclusion of tlie letter contains the 

 history of the five sons of the naturalist, only- 

 one married, the author of this letter. 

 Of Lamarck's three daughters, the eldest, 

 Rosalie, was his devoted secretary in the days 

 of his blindness. Bashfoed Dean, 



Treasurer of the American Branch of 

 the Lamarck Memorial Committee 

 Columbia Univeesitt, 

 New Yoek 



EDWARD GARDINER GARDINER 

 Edward Gardiner Gardiner was the son of 

 Edward Gardiner, of Boston, and of Sophia 



