42 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



fore 1 80 1, however much he may have brooded over 

 the matter, we have no utterances in print on the 

 transformation theory. His studies on the lower 

 animals, and his general knowledge of the vertebrates 

 derived from the work of his contemporaries and his 

 observations in the Museum and menagerie, gave him 

 a broad grasp of the entire animal kingdom, such as 

 no one before him had. As the result, his compre- 

 hensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, 

 enabled him to appreciate the series from monad (his 

 dbauche) to man, the range of forms from the simple 

 to the complex. Even though not a comparative 

 anatomist like Cilvier, he made use of the latter's 

 discoveries, and could understand and appreciate the 

 gradually increasing complexity of forms ; and, unlike 

 Cuvier, realize that they were blood relations, and 

 not separate, piece-meal creations. Animal life, so 

 immeasurably higher than vegetable forms, with its 

 highly complex physiological functions and varied 

 means of reproduction, and the relations of its forms 

 to each other and to the world around, affords facts 

 for evolution which were novel to Lamarck, the 

 descriptive botanist. 



In accordance with the rules of the Museum, which 

 required that all the professors should be lodged 

 within the limits of the Jardin, the choice of lodgings 

 being given to the oldest professors, Lamarck, at the 

 time of his appointment, took up his abode in the 

 house now known as the Maison de Buffon, situated 

 on the opposite side of the Jardin des Plantes from 

 the house afterwards inhabited by Cuvier, and in the 

 angle between the Galerie de Zoologie and the Museurn 



