22 
MEMOIR OF LAMARCK. 
commenced at college, and soon showed a prefer- 
ence for certain departments of natural history. He 
delighted to engage in controversial discussions on 
these subjects with his companions, and to indulge 
in speculations respecting the most abstruse points 
in physics and the phenomena of the natural world. 
It is not - improbable that it was about this time, 
when the wide and varied fields of science were 
just beginning to open to his view, that he con- 
ceived some of those crude and fanciful notions 
which characterise so many of his theoretical views. 
It is less a matter of surprise that such ideas should 
suggest themselves, at the outset of his career, to one 
of his ardent temperament and lively imagination, 
than that he should have persisted in maintaining 
them when his knowledge was more extended and 
his judgment matured, although in the opinion of 
almost every other person their fallacy appeared 
demonstrable. 
Botany and meteorology were the branches on 
which he first bestowed the greatest degree of 
attention. Even before he left the army, he had 
become attached to the former ; and during his stay 
at Monaco, had examined the singular vegetation 
of that rocky country. During his illness, he was 
lodged, for the sake of economy, in an apartment at 
the top of a high house, from which the clouds 
formed almost the only spectacle; and to relieve 
the tedium of his long solitude, he was accustomed 
to watch their varying forms and aspects, and care- 
fully to observe all the other atmospheric pheno- 
