Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/786

* LAMAB. 712 LAMARCK. Supreme Court from 1S88 until his death. His etl'orts were directed chiclly to bringing about a reconeiliation and a better understanding between the North and the South, and a reniarl<ahle eulo- gy of Senator Sumner, delivered by him before the llouse in 1874, did more than perliaiis any other one tiling uji to that time toward accomplishing this result. He opposed with great energy and elocpienec all schemes involving the debasement or undue inllation of the currency, and in 1878 showed his strength of conviction and independ- ence of mind by refusing to resign or change his views on this question at the command of the ^Mississippi Legislature, and by appealing to the people, who enthusiastically sustained him. Among his many notable orations and addresses perhaps the ablest was that delivered at the unveiling of the Calhoun monument at Charles- ton, S. C, in 1887. Consult Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar: His Life, Times, and iS'pccc/ics (Nash- ville, Tenn., 1800). LAMAB, MlRABEAU BUONAI'AKTE (1798- 1859). An American politician. President of Texas, the brother of the elder L. Q. C. Lamar. He was born at Louisville, (ia., and engaged in agricultural and mercantile pursuits until 1828, when he founded a States'-rights newspaper, the Colundjus Independent. In 183.5 he went to Texas and became prominently identified with the revolutionary party. He served at the battle of San .laeinto, was commissioned major-general, and became .'Vttorney-General, Secretary of War, Vice-President, and President of Texas. During his term of ollice as president (18,'iS-41). the in- dependence of Texas was recognized by the chief powers of Europe. He served with distinction in the Mexican War and against the Comanche In- dians. In 1S.')7 he was appointed United States Minister to the Argentine Republic, but did not serve; in 1858 Minister to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He published Terse Memorials. LAMARCK', Count. A name of the Belgian soldier and author Aremberg or Arenberg (q.v. ). LAMARCK, .Tean Baptiste Pierre Antoine DE Mo.NET I)E ( 1744-1829) . A French zoiilogist, re- gardeil as the greatest of the period between Lin- nneus and Cuvier: the founder of organic evo- lution, and of invertebrate paleontology. He was born August 1, 1744, at Bazentin-le-Petit. a vil- lage in Pieard.y, the eleventh child of parents belonging to the minor nobility. Destined by his parents for the Church, though preferring a military life, he entered the college of the .Jesuits at .•miens. But his father dying in 17fiO, he enlisted at the age of sixteen in the French army, during the Seven Years' War. and distinguished himself, and was promoted to a lieutenancy. His military career was. however, checked by a serious accident, whereupon he went to Paris, studied medicine, and. meeting Rousseau, was led to study botany under Bernard de .Tussieu. For ten years he studied native and exotic plants. His Flore fran^aise, published in 1778. brought young Lamarck immediate fame, and led to his election to Ihe French Academy of Sciences in 1779. In 1781 BufTon obtained for him a com- mission as royal botanist, charged with visiting the foreign botanical gardens and museums, as well as mines. His travels (1781-82) led him to visit Holland, Germany, and Hungary. On his return he was appointed keeper of the herbarium of the Royal Garden, to which he afterwards gave the present name, Jardin des Plantes. His career as a botanist, in which he achieved such success that he was called the Frencli Linnaeus, covered a [leriod of about twenty-five years. Jleanwhile he took an active ])art in the reorgan- i/.ati(jn (jf the Museum of Natural Uisfcjry. with the result that his ideas were carried out and extended by Lakanal, and the Jardin des I'lantes was transformed into an institution of higlier in- struction, with a statr of twelve professors. We now come to the third stage of his life — Lanuirek the zoologist and <>volutinist. in the sunnner of 1793 the Jluscnm of Natiral His- tory having been reorganized, the chair of zo- ology was divided, the ]irofcssorship of vertc- l)rate zoiilogy being filled by (ieoll'roy Saint- Ililairc, while to Lanuirek, now fcutynine years of age, was assigned the chair of invertebrate zoology. In 1801 api^eared his tit/st&mc des ani- muux sans vertibrcs, in the introduction to which his views on the origin of species were first published. Lanuirek introduced great re- form lii the classification of animals. He divided them into vertebrates and invertebrates. He founded the classes Infusoria, Annelida. Crusta- cea. .rachnida, and Tunicata. the order of Cirri- pedia, and the molluscan group of llefcropoda. He also showed that echinoderms are (piite dis- tinct from polyps, thus antici])ating conclusions of a half-century later. He s])ecializx'd in the -Mollusca, breaking up the Linna^an genera into nuire modern generic groups, and all later work in this branch has been in the line of exjiansion and elaboration of his labors. The I'liilonnpliie zoiilofiique was ]iil)lished in 1809. and in 181.'5-22 appeared his moiuimental work, llisloirc tialu- rellc des animaux .lans vrrtcbres. Lamarck was greatly interested early in life in meteorology, and from 1799 to 1810 he pub- lished an annual meteorological report, and was the first to foretell the probabilities of the weather. His speculations in physics and chem- istry were, however, worthless: in fact, he lacked the qualities of an exitfrinuMiter, in this respect dilToring from Darwin. A little book, published in 1822, entitled ni/drorieol', as Cuvier was of vertebrate paleontology-. He utterly opposed Cuvier's views of tile sudden general extinction and crea- tion of s])ecies, believing that the fossil forms were the ancestors nf the animals now living; species to his mind being variable and under- going a slow modification. He insisted on the following ftaindation principles of paleontology: (1) The great length of geological time; (2) the continuous existence of organic life through the geological periods: (3) the physical environ- ment remaining of the same general nature throughout, but with (4) continued gradual, not catastn'|)hic, changes in the relative distri- bution of land and sea — changes which (.')) caused corresponding modifications in the habi- tats, and (G) consequently in the habits, of living beings, so that there has been all through geological history a slow modification of life- forms. .Although Lamarck was a uniformitarian «nd thus anticipated Lyell, his idea of creation was evolutional rather than simply uniforrai-