52 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



In the reports of the meetings of the Board of 

 Professors there is but one reference to his blind- 

 ness. Previous to this we find that, at his last ap- 

 pearance at these sessions — i.e., April 19, 1825 — since 

 his condition did not permit him to giva his course 

 of lectures, he had asked M. Latreille to fill his place ; 

 but such was the latter's health, he proposed that 

 M. Audouin, sub-librarian of the French Institute, 

 should lecture in his stead, on the invertebrate ani- 

 mals. This was agreed to. 



The next reference, and the only explicit one, is 

 that in the records for May 23, 1826, as follows: 

 "Vu la c^citd dont M. de Lamarck est frappd, M. 

 Bosc * continuera d'exercer sur les parties confiert k 

 M. Audouin la surveillance attribute au Professeur." 



But, according to Duval, long before this he had 

 been unable to use his eyes. In his Systime analy- 

 tiquedes Connoissances positives de V Homme, published 

 in 1820, he refers to the sudden loss of his eyesight. 



* Louis Auguste Guillaume Bosc, born in Paris, 1759 ; died in 1828. 

 Author of now unimportant worlcs, entitled : Histoire Nattirelle des 

 Coquilles (1801) ; Hist. Nat. des Vers (1802) ; Hist. Nat. des Crus- 

 tac/s (1828), and papers on insects and plants. He was associ- 

 ated with Lamarck in the publication of th» Journal d' Histoire 

 Naturellc. During the Reign of Terror in 1793 he was a friend of 

 Madame Roland, was arrested, but afterwards set free and placed 

 first on the Directory in 1795. In 1798 lie sailed for Charleston, S. C. 

 Nominated successively vice-consul at Wilmington and consul at New 

 York, but not obtaining his exequatur from President Adams, he 

 went to live with the botanist Michaux in Carolina in his botar#cal 

 garden, where he devoted himself to natural history until the quarrel 

 in 1800 between the United Stales and France caused him to return 

 to France. On his return he sent North American insects to his 

 friends Fabricius and Olivier, fishes to Lacepede, birds to Daudin. 

 reptiles to Latreille. Not giTing all his time to public life, he devoted 

 himself to natural history, horticulture, and agriculture, succeeding 

 Thouin in the chair of horticulture, where he was most usefully em- 

 ployed until his death. — (Cuvier's Eloge.) 



