82 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



It has been supposed that Lamarck, who was frank 

 and at times brusque in character, had made some 

 enemies, and that he had been represented to the 

 Emperor as a maker of almanacs and of weather 

 predictions, and that Napoleon, during a reception, 

 showing to Lamarck his great dissatisfaction with 

 the annuals, had ordered him to stop their publica- 

 tion. 



But according to Bourguin's statement this is not 

 the correct version. He tells us : 



" According to traditions preserved in the family 

 of Lamarck things did not happen so at all. During 

 a reception given to the Institute at the Tuileries, 

 Napoleon, who really liked Lamarck, spoke to him in 

 a jocular way about his weather probabilities, and 

 Lamarck, very much provoked {fris contrari^) at 

 being thus chaffed in the presence of his colleagues, 

 resolved to stop the publication of his observations 

 on the weather. What proves that this version is 

 the true one is that Lamarck published another an- 

 nual which he had in preparation for the year 1810. 

 In the preface he announced that his age, ill health, 

 and his circumstances placed him in the unfortunate 

 necessity of ceasing to busy himself with this periodi- 

 cal work. He ended by inviting those who had the 

 taste for meteorological observations, and the means 

 of devoting their time to it, to take up with con- 

 fidence an enterprise good in itself, based on a 

 genuine foundation, and from which the public would 

 derive advantageous results." 



These opuscles, such as they were, in which 

 Lamarck treated different subjects bearing on the 

 winds, great droughts, rainy seasons, tides, etc., be- 



