LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST 



177 



When any one reached Paris with plants he might be 

 sure that the first one who should visit him would be 

 M. de Lamarck ; this eager interest was the means of 

 his receiving one of the most valuable presents he could 

 have desired. The celebrated traveller Sonnerat, having 

 returned in 1781 for the second time from the Indies, 

 with very rich collections of natural history, imagined 

 that every one who cultivated this science would flock 

 to him ; it was not at Pondichdry or in the Moluccas 

 that he had conceived an idea of the vortex which too 

 often in this capital draws the savants as well as men 

 of the world ; no one came but M. de Lamarck, and 

 Sonnerat, in his chagrin, gave him the magnificent col- 

 lection of plants which he had brought. He profited 

 also by that of Commerson, and by those which had 

 been accumulated by M. de Jussieu, and which were 

 generously opened to him." 



These works were evidently planned and carried out 

 on a broad and comprehensive scale, with originality 

 of treatment, and they were most useful and widely 

 used. Lamarck's original special botanical papers were 

 numerous. They were mostly descriptive of new species 

 and genera, but some were much broader in scope and 

 were published over a period of ten years, from 1784 to 

 1794, and appeared in th.e Journal d' Histoire nature lie, 

 which he founded, and in the Memoires of the Acad- 

 emy of Sciences. 



He discussed the shape or aspect of the plants char- 

 acteristic of certain countries, while his last botanical 

 effort was on the sensibility of plants (1798). 



Although not in the front rank of botanists, com- 

 pared with Linn6, Jussieu, De Candolle, and others, yet 

 during the twenty-six years of his botanical career it 

 may safely be said that Lamarck gave an immense 



