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A celebrated French naturalist; born at Barentin, Aug. I, 1744; died at Paris, Dec. 18, 1829. He directed his studies first to meteorology, but soon turned mainly to botany: his "French Flora" (3 vols., 1778) became the basis of De Candolle's more celebrated work. He wrote also an "Encyclopaedic Tableau of Botany" (3 vols., 1791-1823) and a "Natural History of Plants" (15 vols., 1802). His most celebrated work, "History of the Invertebrates", appeared in 1815-22 in seven volumes. His theoretical views are expounded in his "Zoological Philosophy" (2 vols., 1809): there he attacks the doctrine of the immutability of species, and lays the scientific foundations of what later was called the development theory of the origin of species.