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 Pondichery 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 _Memoires_ 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 Linne, 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 Linne." Lamarck not only described a number of genera and species of plants, but he attempted a general classification, as Cleland states: "In 1785 (_Hist.