Lamarck, the Founder of 

 Evolution. His Life and Work 



CHAPTER I 



BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 



The life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a man 

 of genius who lived far in advance of his age, and 

 who died comparatively unappreciated and neglected. 

 But his original and philosophic views, based as they 

 were on broad conceptions of nature, and touching 

 on the burning questions of our day, have, after the 

 lapse of a hundred years, gained fresh interest and 

 appreciation, and give promise of permanent accept- 

 ance. 



The author of the Flore Frangaise will never be for- 

 gotten by his countrymen, who called him the French 

 JLiniji ; and he who wrote the Animaux sans Ver fi- 

 bres at once took the highest rank as the leading 

 zoologist of his period. But Lamarck was more than 

 a systematic biologist of the first order. Besides 

 rare experience and judgment in the classification of 

 plants and of animals, he had an unusually active, 

 inquiring, and philosophical mind, with an originality 



