in] OF EVOLUTION 1? 



theory, based on sound reasoning from careful obser- 

 vation. 



It is true that there were men, in advance of their 

 age, who in some cases anticipated to a certain extent 

 this work of establishing the doctrine of evolution on 

 a firm foundation. Thus in Italy, the earliest home 

 of so many sciences, a Carmelite friar, Generelli, 

 reasoning on observations made by his compatriots 

 Fracastoro and Leonardo da Vinci in the Sixteenth 

 Century, Steno and Scilla in the Seventeenth, and 

 Lazzaro Moro and Marsilli in the Eighteenth Century, 

 laid the foundations of a rational system of geology in 

 a work published in 1749 which was characterised 

 alike by courage and eloquence. In France, the 

 illustrious Nicolas Desmarest, from his study of the 

 classical region of the Auvergne, was able to show, in 

 1777, how the river valleys of that district had been 

 carved out by the rivers that flow in them. Nor were 

 there wanting geologists with similar previsions in 

 Germany and Switzerland. 



But none of these early exponents of geological 

 theory came so near to anticipating the work of the 

 Nineteenth Century as did the illustrious James 

 Button, whose ' Theory of the Earth,' a first sketch 

 of which was published in 1785, was a splendid ex- 

 position of evolution as applied to the inorganic world. 

 Unfortunately, Button's theory was linked to the 

 extravagancies of what was known at that day as 



J. E. 2 



