Motif from the cover of the book
LAMARCK
LAMARCK
THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION
HIS LIFE AND WORK
WITH TRANSLATIONS OF HIS
WRITINGS ON ORGANIC EVOLUTION
By
ALPHEUS S. PACKARD, M.D., LL.D.
Professor of Zoölogy and Geology in Brown University; author of “Guideto the
Study of Insects,” “Text-book of Entomology,” etc., etc.
“La postérité vous honorera!”
—Mlle. Cornelie de Lamarck
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1901
Copyright, 1901, by
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
All rights reserved
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York
PREFACE
Although it is now a century since Lamarck published the germs of histheory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that thescientific world and the general public have become familiar with thename of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.
The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian theory of organicevolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism; the prevalence ofthese views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially inFrance, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder oforganic evolution, has invested his name with a new interest, and led toa desire to learn some of the details of his life and work, and of histheory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent years, and finallyexpounded it in 1809. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a moreextended sketch of Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work as aphilosophical biologist, than has yet appeared.
But the seeker after the details of his life is baffled by the generalignorance about the man—his antecedents, his parentage, the date of hisbirth, his early training and education, his work as a professor in theJardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place of his burial, andhis relations to his scientific contemporaries.
Except the éloges of Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier, and the briefnotices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, and Bourguin, there is nospecial biography, however brief, except a brochure of thirty-onepages, reprinted from a few scattered articles by the distinguishedanthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in