Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and WorkPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
History
Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Evolution (Biology); Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, 1744-1829; Naturalists -- France -- Biography
Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Institute,
what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with designating the
first forty-eight members, who should elect all the others. He was by
the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as a regicide at the
second restoration, he sailed for the United States, where he was warmly
welcomed by Jefferson. The United States Congress voted him five hundred
acres of land. The government of Louisiana offered him the presidency of
its university, which, however, he did not accept. In 1825 he went to
live on the shores of Mobile Bay on land which he purchased from the
proceeds of the sale of the land given him by Congress. Here he became a
pioneer and planter.
In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and
offered his services to the new government, but received no answer and
was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the initiative of
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reëlection to the French
Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. He lived in
retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his death in 1845
in writing a book entitled _Séjour d'un Membre de l'Institut de France
aux États-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans_. The manuscript mysteriously
disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, _Grand
Dictionnaire Universel_, Art. LAKANAL.) His bust now occupies a
prominent place among those of other great men in the French Academy of
Sciences.
[30] This is seen to be the case by the title of the pamphlet: _Mémoire
sur les Cabinets d'Histoire Naturelle, et particulièrement sur celui du
Jardin des Plantes_.
[31] Bourguin also adds that "on one point Lamarck, with more foresight,
went farther than Lakanal. He had insisted on the necessity of the
appointment of four demonstrators for zoölogy. In the decree of June 10,
1793, they were even reduced to two. Afterwards they saw that this
number was insufficient, and to-day (1863) the department of zoölogy is
administered at the museum by four professors, in conformity with the
division indicated by Lamarck."
CHAPTER IV
PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOÖLOGY AT THE MUSEUM
Lamarck's career as a botanist comprised about twenty-five years. We now
come to the third stage of his life--Lamarck the zoölogist and
evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year when he assumed the duties of
his professorship of the zoölogy of the invertebrate animals; and at a
period when many men desire rest and freedom from responsibility, with
the vigor of an intellectual giant Lamarck took upon his shoulders new
labors in an untrodden field both in pure science and philosophic
thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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