FHOFESSOJi OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 



35 



The associates of Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 

 who had already been connected with the Royal Gar- 

 den and Cabinet, were Daubenton, Thouin, Desfon- 

 taine, Portal, and Mertrude. The Nestor of the 

 faculty was Daubenton, who was born in 1716. He 

 was the collaborator of Buffon in the first part of his 

 Histoire Naturelle, and the author of treatises on 

 the mammals and of papers on the bats and other 

 mammals, also on reptiles, together with embryologi- 

 cal and anatomical essays. Thouin, the professor of 

 horticulture, was the veteran gardener and architect 

 of the Jardin des Plantes, and withal a most useful 

 man. He was affable, modest, genial, greatly be- 

 loved by his students, a man of high character, and 

 possessing much executive ability. A street near the 

 Jardin was named after him. He was succeeded by 

 Bosc. Desfontaine had the chair of botany, but his 

 attainments as a botanist were mediocre, and his lec- 

 tures were said to have been tame and uninteresting. 

 Portal taught human anatomy, while Mertrude lec- 

 tured on vertebrate anatomy ; his chair was filled by 

 Cuvier in 179S. 



Of this group Lamarck was facile princeps, as he 

 combined great sagacity and experience as a system- 

 atist with rare intellectual and philosophic traits. 

 For this reason his fame has perhaps outlasted that 

 of his young contemporary, Geoffroy St. Hilaire. 



The necessities of the Museum led to the division 

 of the chair of zoology, botany being taught by Des- 

 fontaine. And now began a new era in the life of 

 Lamarck. After twenty-five years spent in botanical 

 research he was compelled, as there seemed nothing 



