Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution | Page 4

to be productive
and rest from their labors, he accomplished the best work of his
life--work which has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a
philosophic biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism comprises the
fundamental principles of evolution, and will always have to be taken
into consideration in accounting for the origin, not only of species, but
especially of the higher groups, such as orders, classes, and phyla.
This striking personage in the history of biological science, who has
made such an ineffaceable impression on the philosophy of biology,
certainly demands more than a brief éloge to keep alive his memory.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was
born August 1, 1744, at Bazentin-le-Petit. This little village is situated
in Picardy, or what is now the Department of the Somme, in the
Arrondissement de Péronne, Canton d'Albert, a little more than four
miles from Albert, between this town and Bapaume, and near
Longueval, the nearest post-office to Bazentin. The village of
Bazentin-le-Grand, composed of a few more houses than its sister
hamlet, is seen half a mile to the southeast, shaded by the little forest

such as borders nearly every town and village in this region. The two
hamlets are pleasantly situated in a richly cultivated country, on the
chalk uplands or downs of Picardy, amid broad acres of wheat and
barley variegated with poppies and the purple cornflower, and with
roadsides shaded by tall poplars.
The peasants to the number of 251 compose the diminishing population.
There were 356 in 1880, or about that date. The silence of the single
little street, with its one-storied, thatched or tiled cottages, is at
infrequent intervals broken by an elderly dame in her sabots, or by a
creaking, rickety village cart driven by a farmer-boy in blouse and
hob-nailed shoes. The largest inhabited building is the mairie, a modern
structure, at one end of which is the village school, where fifteen or
twenty urchins enjoy the instructions of the worthy teacher. A stone
church, built in 1774, and somewhat larger than the needs of the hamlet
at present require, raises its tower over the quiet scene.
Our pilgrimage to Bazentin had for its object the discovery of the
birthplace of Lamarck, of which we could obtain no information in
Paris. Our guide from Albert took us to the mairie, and it was with no
little satisfaction that we learned from the excellent village teacher,
M. Duval, that the house in which the great naturalist was born was still
standing, and but a few steps away, in the rear of the church and of the
mairie. With much kindness he left his duties in the schoolroom, and
accompanied us to the ancient structure.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FRONT VIEW]
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK]
The modest château stands a few rods to the westward of the little
village, and was evidently the seat of the leading family of the place. It
faces east and is a two-storied house of the shape seen everywhere in
France, with its high, incurved roof; the walls, nearly a foot and a half
thick, built of brick; the corners and windows of blocks of white
limestone. It is about fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. Above
the roof formerly rose a small tower. There is no porch over the front
door. Within, a rather narrow hall passes through the centre, and opens

into a large room on each side. What was evidently the drawing-room
or salon was a spacious apartment with a low white wainscot and a
heavy cornice. Over the large, roomy fireplace is a painting on the
wood panel, representing a rural scene, in which a shepherdess and her
lover are engaged in other occupations than the care of the flock of
sheep visible in the distance. Over the doorway is a smaller but quaint
painting of the same description. The house is uninhabited, and perhaps
uninhabitable--indeed almost a ruin--and is used as a storeroom for
wood and rubbish by the peasants in the adjoining house to the left, on
the south.
The ground in front was cultivated with vegetables, not laid down to a
lawn, and the land stretched back for perhaps three hundred to four
hundred feet between the old garden walls.
Here, amid these rural scenes, even now so beautiful and tranquil, the
subject of our sketch was born and lived through his infancy and early
boyhood.[1]
If his parents did not possess an ample fortune, they were blessed with
a numerous progeny, for Lamarck was the eleventh and youngest child,
and seems to have survived all the others. Biographers have differed as
to the date of the birth of Lamarck.[2] Happily the exact date had been
ascertained through the researches of M. Philippe Salmon; and
M. Duval kindly showed