"During the twenty-six years that he has lived in Paris the citizen Lamarck has unceasingly devoted himself to the study of natural history, and particularly botany. He has done it successfully, for it is fifteen years since he published under the title of _Flore Française_ the history and description of the plants of France, with the mention of their properties and of their usefulness in the arts; a work printed at the expense of the government, well received by the public, and which now is much sought after and very rare." He then describes his second great botanical undertaking, the _Encyclopædia and Illustration of Genera_, with nine hundred plates. He states that for ten years past he has kept busy "a great number of Parisian artists, three printing presses for different works, besides delivering a course of lectures." The petition was granted. At about this period a pension of twelve hundred francs from the Academy of Sciences, and which had increased to three thousand francs, had ceased eighteen months previously to be paid to him. But at the time (an II.) Lamarck was "chargé de sept enfans," and this appropriation was a most welcome addition to his small salary. The next year (an III.) he again applied for a similar allowance from the funds providing an indemnity for men of letters and artists "whose talents are useful to the Republic." Again referring to the _Flore Française_, and his desire to prepare a second edition of it, and his other works and travels in the interest of botanical science, he says: "If I had been less overburdened by needs of all kinds for some years, and especially since the suppression of my pension from the aforesaid Academy of Sciences, I should prepare the second edition of this useful work; and this would be, without doubt, indeed, the opportunity of making a new present to my country. "Since my return to France I have worked on the completion of my great botanical enterprises, and indeed for about ten years past my works have obliged me to keep in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers. But these important works that I have begun, and have in a well-advanced state, have been in spite of all my efforts suspended and practically abandoned for the last ten years. The loss of my pension from the Academy of Sciences and the enormous increase in the price of articles of subsistence have placed me, with my numerous family, in a state of distress which leaves me neither the time nor the freedom from care to cultivate science in a fruitful way."