176 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



and after travelling by order of the government in 

 different parts of Europe, he undertook on a vast 

 scale a general work on botany. 



" This work comprised two distinct features. In 

 the first {Le Dictionnaire), which made a part of the 

 new encyclopedia, the citizen Lamarck treats of phi- 

 losophical botany, also giving the complete descrip- 

 tion of all the genera and species known. An 

 immense work from the labor it cost, and truly 

 original in its execution. . . . The second treatise, 

 entitled Illustration des Genres, presents in the order 

 of the sexual system the figures and the details of all 

 the genera known in botany, and with a concise ex- 

 position of the generic characters and of the species 

 known. This work, unique of its kind, already con- 

 tains six hundred plates executed by the best artists, 

 and will comprise nine hundred. Also for more than 

 ten years the citizen Lamarck has employed in Paris 

 a great number of artists. Moreover, he has kept 

 running three separate presses for different works, all 

 relating to natural history." 



Cuvier in his Eloge also adds : 



" It is astonishing that M. de Lamarck, who hitherto 

 had been studying botany as an amateur, was able so 

 rapidly to qualify himself to produce so extensive a 

 work, in which the rarest plants were described. It is 

 because, from the moment he undertook it, with all 

 the enthusiasm of his nature, he collected them from 

 the gardens and examined them in all the available 

 herbaria ; passing the days at the houses of the botan- 

 ists he knew, but chiefly at the home of M. de Jussieu, 

 in that home where for more than a century a scientific 

 hospitality welcomed with equal kindness every one 

 who was interested in the delightful study of botany. 



