REORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM 



29 



tion and of Finances to at once make a report on the 

 new organization of the administration of the Jardin 

 des Plantes. 



Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired 

 into the condition and needs of the establishment ; 

 Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure of 1790, 

 written by Lamarck. The next day Lakanal, after a 

 short conference with his colleagues of the Committee 

 of Public Instruction, read in the tribune a short report 

 and a decree which the Committee adopted without 

 discussion. 



Their minds were elsewhere, for grave news had 

 come in from all quarters. The Austrians were 

 bombarding Valenciennes, the Prussians had invested 

 Mayence, the Spanish were menacing Perpignan, and 

 bands of Vendeans had seized Saumur after a bloody 

 battle ; while at Caen, at Evreux, at Bordeaux, at 

 Marseilles, and elsewhere, muttered the thunders of 

 the outbreaks provoked by the proscription of the 

 Girondins. So that under these alarming conditions 



Congress voted him five hundred acres of land. The government of 

 Louisiana offered him the presidency of its university, which, however, 

 he did not accept. In 1825 he went to live on the shores of Mobile 

 Bay on land which he purchased from the proceeds of the sale of the 

 land given him by Congress. Here he became a pioneer and planter. 

 In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and 

 offered his services to the new government, but received no answer 

 and was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the ini- 

 tiative of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reelection 

 to the French Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. 

 He lived in retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his 

 death in 1845 in writing a book entitled Sifjow- d'un Membre de 

 VInstitut de France aux £tats- Unis pendant vingt-deux ans. The 

 manuscript mysteriously disappeared, no trace of it ever having been 

 found. (Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universe!, Art. Lakanal.) 

 His bust now occupies a prominent place among those of other great 

 men in the French Academy of Sciences. 



