vi PREFACE 



and the brief notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, 

 and Bourguin, there is no special biography, however 

 brief, except a brochure of thirty-one pages, reprinted 

 from a few scattered articles by the distinguished 

 anthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in the fourth 

 and last volume of a little-known journal, V Homme, 

 entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Tr ans for mist es, 

 ses Disciples, Paris, 1887. This exceedingly rare 

 pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mor- 

 tillet, with the assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. 

 A. Mondi^re, who with others, under the leadership 

 of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a Reunion 

 Lamarck and a Dtner Lam.arck, to maintain and 

 perpetuate the memory of the great French trans- 

 formist. Owing to their efforts, the exact date of 

 Lamarck's birth, the house in which he lived during 

 his lifetime at Paris, and all that we shall ever know 

 of his place of burial have been established. It is a 

 lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a 

 grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with 

 no headstone to mark the site, on one side of a 

 row of graves of others better cared for, from which 

 trench his bones, with those of others unknown and 

 neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the cata- 

 combs of Paris. Lamarck left behind him no letters 

 or manuscripts ; nothing could be ascertained regard- 

 ing the dates of his marriages, the names of his wives 

 or of all his children. Of his descendants but one is 

 known to be living, an officer in the army. But his 

 aims in life, his undying love of science, his noble 

 character and generous disposition are constantly 

 revealed in his writings. 



