BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 3 



bore adverse criticisms, ridicule, forgetfulness, and 

 inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his 

 theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to 

 his dying day. 



The biography of such a character is replete with 

 interest, and the memory of his unselfish and fruitful 

 devotion to science should be forever cherished. His 

 life was also notable for the fact that after his fiftieth 

 year he took up and mastered a new science ; and at 

 a period when many students of literature and science 

 cease to be productive and rest from their labors, he 

 accomplished the best work of his life — work which 

 has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a 

 philosophic biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism com- 

 prises the fundamental principles of evolution, and 

 will always have to be taken into consideration in 

 accounting for the origin, not only of species, but 

 especially of the higher groups, such as orders, classes, 

 and phyla. 



This striking personage in the history of biological 

 science, who has made such an ineffaceable impres- 

 sion on the philosophy of biology, certainly demands 

 more than a brief ^loge to keep alive his memory. 



Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier 

 de Lamarck) was born August i, 1744, at Bazentin- 

 le-Petit. This little village is situated in Picardy, or 

 what is now the Department of the Somme, in the 

 Arrondissement de P^ronne, Canton d'Albert, a little 

 more than four miles from Albert, between this town 

 and Bapaume, and near Longueval, the nearest post- 

 ofifice to Bazentin. ■ The village of Bazentin-Ie-Grand, 



