one who was
interested in the delightful study of botany. When any one reached
Paris with plants he might be sure that the first one who should
visit him would be M. de Lamarck; this eager interest was the means
of his receiving one of the most valuable presents he could have
desired. The celebrated traveller Sonnerat, having returned in 1781
for the second time from the Indies, with very rich collections of
natural history, imagined that every one who cultivated this science
would flock to him; it was not at Pondichery or in the Moluccas that
he had conceived an idea of the vortex which too often in this
capital draws the savants as well as men of the world; no one came
but M. de Lamarck, and Sonnerat, in his chagrin, gave him the
magnificent collection of plants which he had brought. He profited
also by that of Commerson, and by those which had been accumulated
by M. de Jussieu, and which were generously opened to him."

These works were evidently planned and carried out on a broad and
comprehensive scale, with originality of treatment, and they were most
useful and widely used. Lamarck's original special botanical papers were
numerous. They were mostly descriptive of new species and genera, but
some were much broader in scope and were published over a period of ten
years, from 1784 to 1794, and appeared in the _Journal d'Histoire
naturelle_, which he founded, and in the _Memoires_ of the Academy of
Sciences.

He discussed the shape or aspect of the plants characteristic of certain
countries, while his last botanical effort was on the sensibility of
plants (1798).

Although not in the front rank of botanists, compared with Linne,
Jussieu, De Candolle, and others, yet during the twenty-six years of his
botanical career it may safely be said that Lamarck gave an immense
impetus to botany in France, and fully earned the title of "the French
Linne."

Lamarck not only described a number of genera and species of plants, but
he attempted a general classification, as Cleland states:

"In 1785 (_Hist. de l'Acad._) he evinced his appreciation of the
necessity of natural orders in botany by an attempt at the
classification of plants, interesting though crude, and falling
immeasurably short of the system which grew in the hands of his
intimate friend Jussieu."--_Encyc. Brit._, Art. LAMARCK.

A genus of tropical plants of the group _Solanaceae_ was named _Markea_
by Richard, in honor o