46 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



indeed, the opportunity of making a new present to 

 my country. 



" Since my return to France I have worked on the 

 completion of my great botanical enterprises, and in- 

 deed for about ten years past my works have obliged 

 me to keep in constant activity a great number of 

 artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers. 

 But these important works that I have begun, and 

 have in a well-advanced state, have been in spite of 

 all my efforts suspended and practically abandoned 

 for the last ten years. The loss of my pension from 

 the Academy of Sciences and the enormous increase 

 in the price of articles of subsistence have placed me, 

 with my numerous family, in a state of distress which 

 leaves me neither the time nor the freedom from 

 care to cultivate science in a fruitful way." 



Lamarck's collection of shells, the accumulation of 

 nearly thirty years,* was purchased by the govern- 

 ment at the price of five thousand livres. This sum 

 was used by him to balance the price of a national 

 estate for which he had contracted by virtue of the 

 law of 28 ventose de I'an IV.f This little estate, 

 which was the old domain of Beauregard, was a 

 modest farm-house or country-house at H^ricourt- 



* In the " avertissement " to his Systlme des Animaux sans Ver- 

 tlbres (1801), after stating that he had at his disposition the magnifi- 

 cent collection of invertebrate animals of the museum, he refers to his 

 private collection as follows : " Et une autre assez riche que j'ai 

 formee moi-meme par pres de trente annees de recherches," p. vii. 

 Afterwards he formed another collection of shells named according 

 to his system, and containing a part of the types described in his 

 Ilistoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebrcs and in his minor arti- 

 cles. This collection the government did not acquire, and it is now in 

 the museum at Geneva. The Paris museum, however, possesses a 

 good many of the Lamarckian types, which are on exhibition (Perrier, 

 1. c, p. 20). 



\ Lettre du Ministre des Finances (de Ramel) au Minisire de Vln- 

 tMeur (13 pr. an V.). See Perrier, 1. u. , p. 20. 



