Finally, it is essential to point out that the interest of the register of 
attendance cannot be limited to its relevance to the history of transformism. 
After all, as Landrieu did emphasize in 1909, many of Lamarck's pupils 
subsequently returned to the provincial or metropolitan obscurity from whence 
they had come. For many of them, a signature, often very difficult to decipher, 
is all that one would ever know of them. For others, traces of their activities 
can be found in provincial naturalist societies, in the list of pupils attending 
the school of naturalist travellers established in 1819 at the Museum, in the 
archives of medical associations, in the history of families of pharmacists or 
provincial elites. It is also clear that many did not show any interest in the 
theories of their professor, or were even completely opposed to them. The 
reconstruction of networks of diffusion of and opposition to Lamarck's theories, 
important in itself, should thus be placed in the context of a systematic 
analysis (so far as this is possible) of the professional vocations and the 
pedagogical or, more broadly, ideological interests of the hundreds and hundreds 
of students who attended the lectures at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle, when 
this scientific and political centre of early-nineteenth century Europe was 
going through its golden age. We are dealing with a significant sample of 
students, and perseverance and luck (always necessary in this type of 
enterprise) could allow us to find that a small percentage of them have left 
diaries and letters helping us to understand the motivations, the social and 
intellectual stakes and the hopes that motivated these youths to undertake the 
Parisian adventure. In brief, one would have to sketch a natural history (both 
social and cultural) of the naturalists in France during the Revolution and the 
Empire. Yet again, a comparative dimension could help approaching wide-ranging 
issues. The permanence of a tradition of provincial naturalist societies and the 
predominance of the agricultural over the industrial world for the greatest part 
of France and for most of the nineteenth century, for example, suggest a 
critical evaluation of the social and political roles of the natural sciences in 
the provinces of the country. One could then compare the French situation to 
that of England, where, apart from the essentially philanthropic agricultural 
societies, often dominated by the clergy and the aristocracy, institutions such 
as the Mechanics' Institutes or, at the opposite extreme, the radical working 
class societies, offered highly differentiated venues for social identification 
and promotion.