CHAPTER VI 



POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS 

 OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SOME LATER 

 BIOLOGISTS 



De Blainville, a worthy successor of ^Lamarck, 

 in his posthumous book, Cuvier et Geoffrey Saint- 

 Hilaire, pays the highest tribute to his predecessor, 

 whose position as the leading naturalist of his time he 

 fully and gratefully acknowledges, saying : " Among 

 the men whose lectures I have had the advantage of 

 hearing, I truly recognize only three masters, M. de 

 Lamarck, M. Claude Richard, and M. Pinel " (p. 43). 

 He also speaks of wishing to write the scientific 

 biographies of Cuvier and De Lamarck, the two zo- 

 ologists of this epoch whose lectures he most fre- 

 quently attended and whose writings he studied, and 

 " who have exercised the greatest influence on the 

 zoology of our time " (p. 42). Likewise in the open- 

 ing words of the preface he refers to the rank taken 

 by Lamarck : 



" The aim which I have proposed to myself in my 

 course on the principles of zoology demonstrated by 

 the history of its progress from Aristotle to our time, 

 and consequently the plan which I have followed 

 to attain this aim, have very naturally led me, so 

 to speak, in spite of myself, to signalize in M. de 

 Lamarck the expression of one of those phases 



