Vl HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation 

 of species, I need not here enter on details. 



Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the 

 subject excited much attention. This justly celebrated 

 naturalist first published his views in 1801 ; he much en- 

 larged them in 1809 in his " Philosophie Zoologique," and 

 subsequently, 1815, in the Introduction to his " Hist. Nat. 

 des Animaux sans Vertebres." In these works he upholds 

 the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended 

 from other species. He first did the eminent service of 

 arousing attention to the probability of all change in the 

 organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result 

 of law, and not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck 

 seems to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the 

 gradual change of species, by the difficulty of distinguish- 

 ing species and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation 

 of forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic 

 productions. With respect to the means of modification, 

 he attributed something to the direct action of the physical 

 conditions of life, something to the crossing of already 

 existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to the 

 effects of habit. To this latter agency he seems to attribute 

 all the beautiful adaptations in nature ; such as the long 

 neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees. 

 But he likewise believed in a law of progressive develop- 

 ment ; and as all the forms of life thus tend to progress, in 

 order to account for the existence at the present day of 

 simple productions, he maintains that such forms are now 

 spontaneously generated.* 



Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as is stated in his " Life," written 



* I have taken the date of the first publication of Lamarck from 

 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's (" Hist. Nat. Generale," torn. ii. p. 

 405, 1859) excellent history of opinion on this subject. In this work a 

 full account is given of Buff on' s conclusions on the same subject It is 

 curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated 

 the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his " Zoono- 

 mia" (vol. i. pp. 509-510), published in 1794. According to Isid. Geof- 

 froy there is no doubt that Goethe was an extreme partisan of similar 

 views, as shown in the introduction to a work written in 1794 and 1795. 

 but not published till long afterward: he has pointedly remarked 

 ("Goethe als Naturforscher," von Dr. Karl Meding, s. 34) that the 

 future question for naturalists will be how, for instance, cattle got their 

 horns, and not for what they are used. It is rather a singular instance 

 of the manner in which similar views arise at about the same time, that 

 Goethe in Germany, Dr. Darwin in England, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire 

 (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same conclusion 

 on the origin of species, in the years 1794-95. 



