Title: Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution
His Life and Work

Author: Alpheus Spring Packard

Release Date: February 10, 2007 [EBook #20556]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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LAMARCK


[Illustration: Attempt at a reconstruction of the Profile of Lamarck
from an unpublished etching by Dr. Cachet]




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 "Guide
to 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 his
theory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that the
scientific world and the general public have become familiar with the
name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.

The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian theory of organic
evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism; the prevalence of
these views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially in
France, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder of
organic evolution, has invested his name with a new interest, and led to
a desire to learn some of the details of his life and work, and of his
theory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent years, and finally
expounded it in 1809. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a more
extended sketch of Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work as a
philosophical biologist, than has yet appeared.

But the seeker after the details of his life is baffled by the general
ignorance about the man--his antecedents, his parentage, the date of his
birth, his early training and education, his work as a professor in the
Jardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place of his burial, and
his relations to his scientific con...

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