PREFACE 



Although it is now a century since Lamarck 

 published the germs of his theory, it is perhaps only 

 within the past iifty years that the scientific world 

 and the general public have become familiar with the 

 name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism. 



The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian the- 

 ory of organic evolution, so that it has become a 

 rival of Darwinism ; the prevalence of these views in 

 the United States, Germany, England, and especially 

 in France, where its author is justly regarded as the 

 real founder of organic evolution, has invested his 

 name with a new interest, and led to a desire to learn 

 some of the details of his life and work, and of his 

 theory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent 

 years, and finally expounded it in i8og. The time 

 seems ripe, therefore, for a more extended sketch of 

 Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work as a 

 philosophical biologist, than has yet appeared. 



But the seeker after the details of his life is bafHed 

 by the general ignorance about the man — his ante- 

 cedents, his parentage, the date of his birth, his early 

 training and education, his work as a professor in the 

 Jardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place 

 of his burial, and his relations to his scientific con- 

 temporaries. 



Except the doges oi Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier, 



