The city of Toulouse has also honored itself by naming one of its streets after Lamarck; this was due to the proposal of Professor Émile Cartailhac to the Municipal Council, which voted to this effect May 12, 1886.
In the meetings of the Assembly of Professors no one took the trouble to prepare and enter minutes, however brief and formal, relative to his decease. The death of Lamarck is not even referred to in the Procès-verbaux. This is the more marked because there is an entry in the same records for 1829, and about the same date, of an extraordinary séance held November 19, 1829, when “the Assembly” was convoked to take measures regarding the death of Professor Vauquelin relative to the choice of a candidate, Chevreul being elected to fill his chair.
Lamarck’s chair was at his death divided, and the two professorships thus formed were given to Latreille and De Blainville.
At the session of the Assembly of Professors held December 8, 1829, Geoffroy St. Hilaire sent in a letter to the Assembly urging that the department of invertebrate animals be divided into two, and referred to the bad state of preservation of the insects, the force of assistants to care for these being insufficient. He also, in his usual tactful way, referred to the “complaisance extrème de la parte de M. De Lamarck” in 1793, in assenting to the reunion in a single professorship of the mass of animals then called “insectes et vermes.”
The two successors of the chair held by Lamarck were certainly not dilatory in asking for appointments. At a session of the Professors held December 22, 1829, the first meeting after his death, we find the following entry: “M. Latreille écrit pour exprimer son désir d’être présenté comme candidat à la chaire vacante par le décès de M. Lamarck et pour rappeler ses titres à cette place.”
M. de Blainville also wrote in the same manner: “Dans le cas que la chaire serait divisée, il demande la place de Professeur de l’histoire des animaux inarticulés. Dans le cas contraire il se présente également comme candidat, voulant, tout en respectant les droits acquis, ne pas laisser dans l’oubli ceux qui lui appartiennent.”
January 12, 1830, Latreille[49] was unanimously elected by the Assembly a candidate to the chair of entomology, and at a following session (February 16th) De Blainville was unanimously elected a candidate for the chair of Molluscs, Vers et Zoophytes, and on the 16th of March the royal ordinance confirming those elections was received by the Assembly.
There could have been no fitter appointments made for those two positions. Lamarck had long known Latreille “and loved him as a son.” De Blainville honored and respected Lamarck, and fully appreciated his commanding abilities as an observer and thinker.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] I have been unable to ascertain the names of any of his wives, or of his children, except his daughter, Cornelie.