born in 1762, and died in 1845. He was a
professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the
faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative
(_depute_) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational
questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and
elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving from
a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific
institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for the
death of Louis XVI.

Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Institute,
what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with designating the
first forty-eight members, who should elect all the others. He was by
the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as a regicide at the
second restoration, he sailed for the United States, where he was warmly
welcomed by Jefferson. The United States Congress voted him five hundred
acres of land. The government of Louisiana offered him the presidency of
its university, which, however, he did not accept. In 1825 he went to
live on the shores of Mobile Bay on land which he purchased from the
proceeds of the sale of the land given him by Congress. Here he became a
pioneer and planter.

In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and
offered his services to the new government, but received no answer and
was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the initiative of
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reelection to the French
Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. He lived in
retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his death in 1845
in writing a book entitled _Sejour d'un Membre de l'Institut de France
aux Etats-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans_. The manuscript mysteriously
disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, _Grand
Dictionnaire Universel_, Art. LAKANAL.) His bust now occupies a
prominent place among those of other great men in the French Academy of
Sciences.

[30] This is seen to be the case by the title of the pamphlet: _Memoire
sur les Cabinets d'Histoire Naturelle, et particulierement sur celui du
Jardin des Plantes_.

[31] Bourguin also adds that "on one point Lamarck, with more foresight,
went farther than Lakanal. He had insisted on the necessity of the
appointment of four demonstrators for zooelogy. In the decree of June 10,
1793, they were even reduce