86 THE COMING [CH. 



green to yellow as autumn advances, together with the leaves of 

 plants among which it seeks its prey. Now if species come in 

 succession, such contrivances must sometimes be made, and such 

 relations predetermined between species, as the Mantis, for 

 example, and plants not then existing, but which it was foreseen 

 would exist together with some particular climate at a given 

 time. But I cannot do justice to this train of speculation in a 

 letter, and will only say that it seems to me to offer a more 

 beautiful subject for reasoning and reflecting on, than the notion 

 of great batches of new species all coming in and afterwards 

 going out at once 84 .' 



We have cited this very remarkable passage, as it 

 affords striking evidence of how deeply Lyell had 

 thought on this great question at a very early period. 

 Nevertheless it is certain that when he wrote the 

 second volume of the Principles, he had not been 

 able to satisfy himself that any hypothesis of the 

 mode of evolution, that had up to that time been 

 suggested, could be regarded as satisfactory. 



The only serious attempt to explain the derivation 

 of new species from old ones that came before Lyell 

 was that of the illustrious Lamarck. 



Very noteworthy was the work of that old 

 wounded French soldier, afflicted in his later years 

 as he was by blindness. By his early labours, 

 Lamarck had attained a considerable reputation 

 as a botanist, and later in life he turned his attention 

 to zoology, and then to palaeontology and geology. 

 In zoology, he did for the study of invertebrate 



