Certainly the most practical and efficient sort of organization for such an establishment.[26] Lamarck, though holding a place subordinate to the other officers, was present, as the records of the proceedings of the officers of the Jardin des Plantes at this meeting show.
During the middle of 1791, the Intendant, La Billarderie, after "four years of incapacity," placed his resignation in the hands of the king.
The Minister of the Interior, instead of nominating Daubenton as Intendant, reserved the place for a _protege_, and, July 1, 1791, sent in the name of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the distinguished author of _Paul et Virginie_ and of _Etudes sur la Nature_.

The new Intendant was literary in his tastes, fond of nature, but not a practical naturalist.

M.Hamy wittily states that "Bernardin Saint-Pierre contemplated and dreamed, and in his solitary meditations had imagined a system of the world which had nothing in common with that which was to be seen in the Faubourg Saint Victor, and one can readily imagine the welcome that the officers of the Jardin gave to the singular naturalist the Tuileries had sent them."[27] Lamarck suffered an indignity from the intermeddling of this second Intendant of the Jardin.

In his budget of expenses[28] sent to the Minister of the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion to refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering way, which may have both amused and disgusted him.
But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing to a close, and a new era in French natural science, signalized by the reorganization of the Jardin and Cabinet under the name of the _Museum d'Histoire Naturelle_, was dawning.

On the 6th of February, 1793, the National Convention, at the request of Lakanal,[29] ordered the Committees of Public Instruction and of Finances to at once make a report on the new organization of the administration of the Jardin des Plantes.
Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired into the condition and needs of the establishment; Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure of 1790, written by Lamarck.