Lamarck, Jean Baptiste

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

la-mark', Jean Baptiste (1744-1829), a noted French naturalist. He came of good family. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Amiens. He was intended for the church, but ran away to the army where he distinguished himself for bravery. A companion having lifted him by the head in sport, he was injured and was obliged to give up a military life. He went to Paris to study medicine, and supported himself as a banker's clerk. There he fell in with others of a scientific mind and took up the study of botany. He issued a manual of the flora of France. It was for some time the standard text for the identification of French plants, and secured for its author the honor of admission to the Academy of Sciences. He was favored by the friendship of Buffon. Botany and the classification of plants he soon left to his friend Jussieu. In 1792 he accepted a chair of zoology in the Royal Garden. In this line of work he became the predecessor of Cuvier. He introduced the plan of classifying animals according to whether they have or do not have a backbone. He coined the word "invertebrata," and did most of his work in this division of the animal kingdom. Lamarck also propounded the theory, since so ably advanced by Darwin and others, that the higher animals are developed from lower forms. He also taught that changes in animal structure have been brought about by efforts to meet the needs imposed by environment; for instance, that the long neck of the giraffe was developed by an effort, running through thousands of years, to reach the foliage of trees, and that the mole is practically blind because for generations it has made so little use of its eyes. In this he differed somewhat from the theory propounded later by Darwin who held that changes in organisms arose by variation and natural selection.