A street near the Jardin was named after him.

He was succeeded by Bosc.

Desfontaines had the chair of botany, but his attainments as a botanist were mediocre, and his lectures were said to have been tame and uninteresting.

Portal taught human anatomy, while Mertrude lectured on vertebrate anatomy; his chair was filled by Cuvier in 1795.
Of this group Lamarck was _facile princeps_, as he combined great sagacity and experience as a systematist with rare intellectual and philosophic traits.

For this reason his fame has perhaps outlasted that of his young contemporary, Geoffroy St.Hilaire.
The necessities of the Museum led to the division of the chair of zooelogy, botany being taught by Desfontaines.