enera are thus made available for study in a thousand
plates in quarto, and at the same time the abridged characters of a
vast number of species are given.

"The _Dictionnaire_ contains more details of the history with
careful descriptions, critical researches on their synonymy, and
many interesting observations on their uses or on special points of
their organizations. The matter is not all original in either of the
works, far from it, but the choice of figures is skilfully made, the
descriptions are drawn from the best authors, and there are a large
number which relate to species and also some genera previously
unknown."

Lamarck himself says that after the publication of his _Flore
Francaise_, his zeal for work increasing, and after travelling by order
of the government in different parts of Europe, he undertook on a vast
scale a general work on botany.

"This work comprised two distinct features. In the first (_Le
Dictionnaire_), which made a part of the new encyclopedia, the
citizen Lamarck treats of philosophical botany, also giving the
complete description of all the genera and species known. An immense
work from the labor it cost, and truly original in its execution....
The second treatise, entitled _Illustration des Genres_, presents in
the order of the sexual system the figures and the details of all
the genera known in botany, and with a concise exposition of the
generic characters and of the species known. This work, unique of
its kind, already contains six hundred plates executed by the best
artists, and will comprise nine hundred. Also for more than ten
years the citizen Lamarck has employed in Paris a great number of
artists. Moreover, he has kept running three separate presses for
different works, all relating to natural history."

Cuvier in his _Eloge_ also adds:

"It is astonishing that M. de Lamarck, who hitherto had been
studying botany as an amateur, was able so rapidly to qualify
himself to produce so extensive a work, in which the rarest plants
were described. It is because, from the moment he undertook it, with
all the enthusiasm of his nature, he collected them from the gardens
and examined them in all the available herbaria; passing the days at
the houses of the botanists he knew, but chiefly at the home of M.
de Jussieu, in that home where for more than a century a scientific
hospitality welcomed with equal kindness every