[Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution by Alpheus Spring Packard]@TWC D-Link bookLamarck, the Founder of Evolution CHAPTER IV 6/21
On the other hand, Lamarck's field comprised more than nine-tenths of the animal kingdom. Already the collections of insects, crustacea, worms, molluscs, echinoderms, corals, etc., at the Museum were enormous.
At this time France began to send out those exploring expeditions to all parts of the globe which were so numerous and fruitful during the first third of the nineteenth century.
The task of arranging and classifying single-handed this enormous mass of material was enough to make a young man quail, and it is a proof of the vigor, innate ability, and breadth of view of the man that in this pioneer work he not only reduced to some order this vast horde of forms, but showed such insight and brought about such radical reforms in zooelogical classification, especially in the foundation and limitation of certain classes, an insight no one before him had evinced.
To him and to Latreille much of the value of the _Regne Animal_ of Cuvier, as regards invertebrate classes, is due. The exact title of the chair held by Lamarck is given in the _Etat_ of persons attached to the National Museum of Natural History at the date of the 1er messidor, an II.
of the Republic (1794), where he is mentioned as follows: "LAMARCK--fifty years old; married for the second time; wife _enceinte_; six children; professor of zooelogy, of insects, of worms, and microscopic animals." His salary, like that of the other professors, was put at 2,868 livres, 6 sous, 8 deniers.[34] Etienne Geoffroy St.Hilaire[35] has related how the professorship was given to Lamarck. "The law of 1793 had prescribed that all parts of the natural sciences should be equally taught.
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