222 EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY vi 



facility in using it, he made the general assumption 

 that the effort of an animal to exert an organ in a 

 given direction tends to develop the organ in that 

 direction. But a little consideration showed that, 

 though Lamarck had seized what, as far it goes, is 

 a true cause of modification, it is a cause the actual 

 effects of which are wholly inadequate to account 

 for any considerable modification in animals, and 

 which can have no influence at all in the vegetable 

 world ; and probably nothing contributed so much 

 to discredit evolution, in the early part of this 

 century, as the floods of easy ridicule which were 

 poured upon this part of Lamarck's speculation. 

 The theory of natural selection, or survival of the 

 fittest, was suggested by Wells in 1813, and 

 further elaborated by Matthew in 1831. But the 

 pregnant suggestions of these writers remained 

 practically unnoticed and forgotten, until the theory 

 was independently devised and promulgated by 

 Darwin and Wallace in 1858, and the effect of its 

 publication was immediate and profound. 



Those who were unwilling to accept evolution, 

 without better grounds than such as are offered by 

 Lamarck, or the author of that particularly un- 

 satisfactory book, the 'Vestiges of the Natural 

 History of the Creation," and who therefore 

 preferred to suspend their judgment on the 

 question, found, in the principle of selective 

 breeding, pursued in all its applications with 

 marvellous knowledge and skill by Mr. Darwin, a 



