28 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion 

 to refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering 

 way, which may have both amused and disgusted 

 him. 



But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing 

 to a close, and a new era in French natural science, 

 signalized by the reorganization of the Jardin and 

 Cabinet under the name of the Musdum d' Histoire 

 Naturelle, was dawning. On the 6th of February, 

 1793, the National Convention, at the request of 

 Lakanal,* ordered the Committees of Public Instruc- 



and also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system 

 of Linne in the arrangement of the herbarium, added : " However, 

 desirous of retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the posi- 

 tion which he needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after 

 several conversations with the older officers of the Jardin, I have believed 

 that, M. Desfontaines being charged with the botanical lectures in the 

 school, and M. Jussieu in the neighborhood of Paris, it would be well 

 to send M. La Marck to herborize in some parts of the kingdom, in 

 order to complete the French flora, as this will be to his taste, and at 

 the same time very useful to the progress of botany ; thus everybody 

 will be employed and satisfied." — Perrier, Lamarck et le Transform- 

 isme Actual, pp. I'i, 14. (Copied from the National Archives.) "The 

 hfe of Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as irregular as 

 that of his friend and master [Rousseau]. But his character was 

 essentially crafty and selfish, like that of many other sentimentalists , 

 of the first order." (Morley's Rousseau, p. 437, footnote.) 



*Joseph Lakanal was born in 1762, and died in 1845. He was a 

 professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the 

 faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative 

 (dipuU) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational 

 questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and 

 elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving 

 from a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific 

 institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for 

 the death of Louis XVL 



Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Insti- 

 tute, what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with 

 designating the first forty-eight members, who should elect all the 

 others. He was by the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as 

 a regicide at the second restoration, he sailed for the United States, 

 where he was warmly welcomed by Jefferson. The United States 



