Chapter XI: Lamarck as a Botanist

During the century preceding the time of Lamarck, botany had not flourished in France with the vigor shown in other countries. Lamarck himself frankly stated in his address to the Committee of Public Instruction of the National Convention that the study of plants had been for a century neglected by Frenchmen, and that the great progress which it had made during this time was almost entirely due to foreigners.

"I am free to say that since the distinguished Tournefort the French
have remained to some extent inactive in this direction; they have
produced almost nothing, unless we except some fragmentary mediocre
or unimportant works. On the other hand, Linné in Sweden, Dilwillen
in England, Haller in Switzerland, Jacquin in Austria, etc., have
immortalized themselves by their own works, vastly extending the
limit of our knowledge in this interesting part of natural history."

What led young Lamarck to take up botanical studies, his botanical rambles about Paris, and his longer journeys in different parts of France and in other countries, his six years of unremitting labor on his _Flore Française_, and the immediate fame it brought him, culminating in his election as a member of the French Academy, have been already recounted.

Lamarck was thirty-four when his _Flore Française_ appeared. It was not preceded, as in the case of most botanical works, by any preliminary papers containing descriptions of new or unknown species, and the three stout octavo volumes appeared together at the same date.

The first volume opens with a report on the work made by MM. Duhamel and Guettard. Then follows the _Discours Préliminaire_, comprising over a hundred pages, while the main body of the work opens with the _Principes Élémentaires de Botanique_, occupying 223 pages. The work was a general elementary botany and written in French. Before this time botanists had departed from the artificial system of Linné, though it was convenient for amateurs in naming their plants. Jussieu had proposed his system of natural families, founded on a scientific basis, but naturally more difficult for the use of beginners. To obviate the matter Lamarck conceived and proposed the dichotomic method for the easy determination of species. No new species were described, and the work, written in the vernacular, was simply a guide to the indigenous plants of France, beginning with the cryptogams and ending with the flowering plants. A second edition appeared in 1780, and a third, edited and remodelled by A. P. De Candolle, and forming six volumes, appeared in 1805-1815. This was until within a comparatively few years the standard French botany.

Soon after the publication of his _Flore Française_ he projected two other works which gave him a still higher position among botanists. His _Dictionnaire de Botanique_ was published in 1783-1817, forming eight volumes and five supplementary ones. The first two and part of the third volume were written by Lamarck, the remainder by other botanists, who completed it after Lamarck had abandoned botanical studies and taken up his zoölogical work. His second great undertaking was _L'Illustration des Genres_ (1791-1800), with a supplement by Poiret (1823).

Cuvier speaks thus of these works:

"_L'Illustration des Genres_ is a work especially fitted to enable
one to acquire readily an almost complete idea of this beautiful
science. The precision of the descriptions and of the definitions of
Linnæus is maintained, as in the institutions of Tournefort, with
figures adapted to give body to these abstractions, and to appeal
both to the eye and to the mind, and not only are the flowers and
fruits represented, but often the entire plant. More than two
thousand genera are thus made available for study in a thousand
plates in quarto, and at the same time the abridged characters of a
vast number of species are given.

"The _Dictionnaire_ contains more details of the history with
careful descriptions, critical researches on their synonymy, and
many interesting observations on their uses or on special points of
their organizations. The matter is not all original in either of the
works, far from it, but the choice of figures is skilfully made, the
descriptions are drawn from the best authors, and there are a large
number which relate to species and also some genera previously
unknown."

Lamarck himself says that after the publication of his _Flore Française_, his zeal for work increasing, and after travelling by order of the government in different parts of Europe, he undertook on a vast scale a general work on botany.

"This work comprised two distinct features. In the first (_Le
Dictionnaire_), which made a part of the new encyclopedia, the
citizen Lamarck treats of philosophical botany, also giving the
complete description of all the genera and species known. An immense
work from the labor it cost, and truly original in its execution....
The second treatise, entitled _Illustration des Genres_, presents in
the order of the sexual system the figures and the details of all
the genera known in botany, and with a concise exposition of the
generic characters and of the species known. This work, unique of
its kind, already contains six hundred plates executed by the best
artists, and will comprise nine hundred. Also for more than ten
years the citizen Lamarck has employed in Paris a great number of
artists. Moreover, he has kept running three separate presses for
different works, all relating to natural history."

Cuvier in his _Éloge_ also adds:

"It is astonishing that M. de Lamarck, who hitherto had been
studying botany as an amateur, was able so rapidly to qualify
himself to produce so extensive a work, in which the rarest plants
were described. It is because, from the moment he undertook it, with
all the enthusiasm of his nature, he collected them from the gardens
and examined them in all the available herbaria; passing the days at
the houses of the botanists he knew, but chiefly at the home of M.
de Jussieu, in that home where for more than a century a scientific
hospitality welcomed with equal kindness every one who was
interested in the delightful study of botany. When any one reached
Paris with plants he might be sure that the first one who should
visit him would be M. de Lamarck; this eager interest was the means
of his receiving one of the most valuable presents he could have
desired. The celebrated traveller Sonnerat, having returned in 1781
for the second time from the Indies, with very rich collections of
natural history, imagined that every one who cultivated this science
would flock to him; it was not at Pondichéry or in the Moluccas that
he had conceived an idea of the vortex which too often in this
capital draws the savants as well as men of the world; no one came
but M. de Lamarck, and Sonnerat, in his chagrin, gave him the
magnificent collection of plants which he had brought. He profited
also by that of Commerson, and by those which had been accumulated
by M. de Jussieu, and which were generously opened to him."

These works were evidently planned and carried out on a broad and comprehensive scale, with originality of treatment, and they were most useful and widely used. Lamarck's original special botanical papers were numerous. They were mostly descriptive of new species and genera, but some were much broader in scope and were published over a period of ten years, from 1784 to 1794, and appeared in the _Journal d'Histoire naturelle_, which he founded, and in the _Mémoires_ of the Academy of Sciences.

He discussed the shape or aspect of the plants characteristic of certain countries, while his last botanical effort was on the sensibility of plants (1798).

Although not in the front rank of botanists, compared with Linné, Jussieu, De Candolle, and others, yet during the twenty-six years of his botanical career it may safely be said that Lamarck gave an immense impetus to botany in France, and fully earned the title of "the French Linné."

Lamarck not only described a number of genera and species of plants, but he attempted a general classification, as Cleland states:

"In 1785 (_Hist. de l'Acad._) he evinced his appreciation of the
necessity of natural orders in botany by an attempt at the
classification of plants, interesting though crude, and falling
immeasurably short of the system which grew in the hands of his
intimate friend Jussieu."--_Encyc. Brit._, Art. LAMARCK.

A genus of tropical plants of the group _Solanaceæ_ was named _Markea_ by Richard, in honor of Lamarck, but changed by Persoon and Poiret to _Lamarckea_. The name _Lamarckia_ of Moench and Koeler was proposed for a genus of grasses; it is now _Chrysurus_.

Lamarck's success as a botanist led to more or less intimate relations with Buffon. But it appears that the good-will of this great naturalist and courtier for the rising botanist was not wholly disinterested. Lamarck owed the humble and poorly paid position of keeper of the herbarium to Buffon. Bourguin adds, however:

"_Mais il les dut moins à ses mérites qu'aux petits passions de la
science officielle._ The illustrious Buffon, who was at the same
time a very great lord at court, was jealous of Linné. He could not
endure having any one compare his brilliant and eloquent
word-pictures of animals with the cold and methodical descriptions
of the celebrated Swedish naturalist. So he attempted to combat him
in another field--botany. For this reason he encouraged and pushed
Lamarck into notice, who, as the popularizer of the system of
classification into natural families, seemed to him to oppose the
development of the arrangement of Linné."

Lamarck's style was never a highly finished one, and his incipient essays seemed faulty to Buffon, who took so much pains to write all his works in elegant and pure French. So he begged the Abbé Haüy to review the literary form of Lamarck's works.

Here it might be said that Lamarck's is the philosophic style; often animated, clear, and pure, it at times, however, becomes prolix and tedious, owing to occasional repetition.

But after all it can easily be understood that the discipline of his botanical studies, the friendship manifested for him by Buffon, then so influential and popular, the relations Lamarck had with Jussieu, Haüy, and the zoölogists of the Jardin du Roi, were all important factors in Lamarck's success in life, a success not without terrible drawbacks, and to the full fruition of which he did not in his own life attain.