STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER 17 



/ 



At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet 

 village * near Paris, and there for a year they studied 

 together science and history. And now happened an 

 event which proved to be the turning point, or rather 

 gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck's career 

 and decided his vocation in life. In one of their 

 walks they met the philosopher and sentimentalist, 

 Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about La- 

 marck's acquaintance with this genius, for all the de- 

 tails of his life, both in his early and later years, are 

 pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had attended 

 at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, 

 having by good fortune met Rousseau, he probably 

 improved the acquaintance, and, found by Rousseau 

 to be a congenial spifit, he was soon invited to ac- 

 company him in his herborizations. 



Still more recently Professor Giard f has unearthed 

 from the works of Rousseau the following statement 

 by him regarding species : " Est-ce qu'k proprement 

 parler il n'existerait point d'espfeces dans la nature, 



*Was this quiet place in the region just out of Paris possibly 

 near Mont Valerian ? He must have been about twenty-two years 

 old when he met Rousseau and began to study botany seriously. His 

 Flore Franfaise appeared in 1778, when he was thirty-four years old. 

 Rousseau, at the end of his checkered life, from 1770 to 1778, lived 

 in Paris. He often botanized in the suburbs ; and Mr. Morley, in 

 his Rousseau, says that "one of his greatest delights was to watch 

 Mont Valerien in the sunset " (p. 436). Rousseau died in Paris in 

 1778. That Rousseau expressed himself vaguely in favor of evolu- 

 tion is stated by Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who quotes a ^'Phrase, 

 inalheureusement un peu amhigue, qui semble montrer, dans se grand 

 ^crivaiii, un partisan de plus de la variaUliU du type. " {Rifsum/ 

 des Vues sur Vesphe organique, p. r8, Paris, i88g.) The passage is 

 quotefl in Geoffroy 's Histoire Naiurelle G/n^rale des Regnes organiques, 

 ii., ch. I., p. 271. I have been unable to verify this quotation. 



\Le(on d'Ouverture du Cours de I' Evolution des Etres organises. 

 Paris, i888. 



