BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER -j 



de I'artillerie de France demeurante au chMeau de 

 Guillemont, qui ont sign6 avec mon dit sieur de Ba- 

 zentin et nous. 



Ont sign6 : De Foss6, De Bucy Michelet, Bazentin. 

 Cozette, curd. 



Of Lamarck's parentage and ancestry there are 

 fortunately some traces. In the Registre aux Actes 

 de B uptime pour I'Annde 1702, still preserved in the 

 mairie of Bazentin-le-Petit, the record shows that his 

 father was born in February, 1702, at Bazentin. The 

 infant was baptised February 16, 1702, the permis- 

 sion to the curd by Henry, Bishop of Amiens, having 

 been signed February 3, 1702. Lamarck's grand- 

 parents were, according to this certificate of baptism, 

 Messire Philippe de Monet de Lamarck, Ecuyer, 

 Seigneur des Bazentin, and Dame Magdeleine de 

 Lyonne. 



The family of Lamarck, as stated by H. Masson,* 

 notwithstanding his northern and almost Germanic 

 name of Chevalier de Lamarck, originated in the 

 southwest of France. Though born at Bazentin, in 

 old Picardy, it is not less true that he descended on 

 the paternal side from an ancient house of B6arn, 

 whose patrimony was very modest. This house was 

 that of Monet. 



Another genealogist, Baron C. de Cauna,f tells us 

 that there is no doubt that the family of Monet in 

 Bigorre:): was divided. One of its representatives 



*"Surla maison de Viella — les Mortiers-brevise et les Montalembert 

 en Gascogne— et sur le naturaliste Lamarck." Par Hippolyte Masson. 

 (Revue de Gascogne, xvii., pp. 141-143, 1876.) 



\Ibid., p. 194. 



X A small town in southwestern France, near Lourdes and Pau ; it 

 is about eight miles north of Tarbes, in Gascony. 



