"Lamarck," continues M. Martins, "was the first to distinguish littoral from ocean fossils, but no one accepts his theory that oceans make their beds deeper owing to the action of the tides, and distribute themselves differently over the earth's surface without any change of level of the different parts of that surface.
. . . . . . . . . . .
"Settling down to a single branch of science, in consequence of his professorship, Lamarck now devoted himself to the twofold labour of lecturing and classifying the collections at the museum. In 1802 he published his 'Considerations on the Organization of Living Bodies'; in 1809 his 'Philosophie Zoologique,' a development of the 'Considerations'; and from 1816 to 1822 his Natural History of the invertebrate animals, in seven volumes. This is his great work, and, being entirely a work of description and classification, was received with the unanimous approbation of the scientific world. His 'Fossil Shells of the Neighbourhood of Paris'—a work in which his profound knowledge of existing shells enabled him to class with certainty the remains of forms that had disappeared thousands of ages ago—met also with a favourable reception.
"Lamarck was fifty years old before he began to study zoology; and prolonged microscopic examinations first fatigued and at length enfeebled his eyesight. The clouds which obscured it gradually thickened, and he became quite blind. Married four times, the father of seven children, he saw his small patrimony and even his earlier savings swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the manner in which he was neglected.
. . . . . . . . . . .
"He passed the last ten years of his laborious life in darkness, tended only by the affectionate care of his two daughters. The eldest wrote from his dictation part of the sixth and seventh volumes of his work on the invertebrate animals. From the time her father became confined to his room his daughter never left the house; and when first she did so after his death, she was distressed by the fresh air to which she had been so long a stranger.
"Lamarck died December 18, 1829, at the age of eighty-five. Latreille and Blainville were his successors at the museum. The incredible activity of the first professor had so greatly increased the number of the known invertebrata that it was found necessary to endow two professors, where one had originally been sufficient.
"His two daughters were left penniless. In the year 1832 I myself saw Mlle. Cornélie de Lamarck earning a scanty pittance by fastening dried plants on to paper, in the museum of which her father had been a professor. Many a species named and described by him must have passed under her eyes and increased the bitterness of her regret."[185]
FOOTNOTES:
[184] Paris, 1873.