She rendered strong and robust those with a good constitution, and destroyed all the others.

Our societies differ in this respect, where the state, in rendering the children burdensome to the father, indirectly kills them before birth."[14] Soon Lamarck abandoned not only a military career, but also music, medicine, and the bank, and devoted himself exclusively to science.

He was now twenty-four years old, and, becoming a student of botany under Bernard de Jussieu, for ten years gave unremitting attention to this science, and especially to a study of the French flora.
Cuvier states that the _Flore Francaise_ appeared after "six months of unremitting labor." However this may be, the results of over nine preceding years of study, gathered together, written, and printed within the brief period of half a year, was no hasty _tour de force_, but a well-matured, solid work which for many years remained a standard one.
It brought him immediate fame.

It appeared at a fortunate epoch.

The example of Rousseau and the general enthusiasm he inspired had made the study of flowers very popular--"_une science a la mode_," as Cuvier says--even among many ladies and in the world of fashion, so that the new work of Lamarck, though published in three octavo volumes, had a rapid success.
The preface was written by Daubenton.[15] Buffon also took much interest in the work, opposing as it did the artificial system of Linne, for whom he had, for other reasons, no great degree of affection.