first time, she was incommoded by the free air, the use of which had been so long unfamiliar to her. It is rare to see virtue carried to such a degree, and it is not less so to inspire it to that degree; and it is adding to the praise of M. de Lamarck, to recount what his children did for him.” After several years of affliction, his constitution at last gave way, and he died on the 18th December, 1829, in the 85th year of his age. Some of his children had been carried off previously, and at the time of his disease only two sons and two daughters survived. The eldest of the former was appointed to a situation of considerable trust under government. A just estimate of Lamarck’s merits, will entitle him to occupy a high place among modern naturalists. Endowed by nature with varied and vigorous mental powers, he was fitted to excel in many branches of knowledge, and never failed to strike out a new path in every department to which he attached himself. He possessed, in an eminent degree, some intellectual qualities which are not frequently combined; a lofty and active imagination, in no way unfitted him for the most unwearied and laborious investigation of minute matters of fact. Hence he seems equally following the natural bent of his mind, when devising a theory to explain the most recondite operations of nature, and describing the markings of a shell, or the ramifications of a coral. It is to be lamented that his imagination so often gained the ascendency over his other faculties, and led to those daring and licentious speculations which have been alluded to. But in other instances, his fancy becomes the legitimate handmaid of his reason, and lends her aid in beautifying and illustrating his speculations. He possessed especially all the requisite qualifications for a zoologist, and it is on what he accomplished in this department that his fame must principally rest. When we perceive the admirable manner in which he discerned and characterized natural groups, his skill in seizing on the most distinctive marks of species, the indefatigable industry with which he investigated their history and synonymy, together with the excellence of his system of arrangement,--we are led to regret that he was so late in entering upon this field of labour, as to be obliged to confine his attention to one division of the animal kingdom, and that he so frequently deviated even from that, in order to indulge his favourite practice of theorizing.