io6 LOUIS AGASSI/.. [CHAP. xvni. 



prised to find that Darwin had almost entirely ignored 

 Lamarck, as if he had never existed. For d'Omalius 

 the " Origin of Species " was the " Philosophic Zoolo- 

 gique " of Lamarck in a new dress. 



In America it was different. Under the leadership 

 of the botanist, Asa Gray, and the geologist, William B. 

 Rogers, almost all the naturalists became at once strong 

 Darwinians. Agassiz tried in vain to stop the sweeping 

 wave, but he was overwhelmed by the flood of publica- 

 tions and reviews. What was rather annoying to him 

 was that the most enthusiastic propagators and apostles 

 of the new gospel were not naturalists at all, with the 

 exception of the systematic botanist, Asa Gray. Not 

 one of them was a zoologist, in any sense of the word. 

 Agassiz was too much a naturalist to accept a number 

 of mere suggestions until they were scientifically proved 

 by exact observations. In his eyes Darwin was an 

 advocate of a foregone conclusion, who argued, not for 

 the purpose of finding in what direction the evidence 

 of any particular fact would lead, but for the purpose 

 of finding something in the fact favourable to his 

 preconceived opinion. Agassiz himself had had the 

 honour to overthrow too many errors and false general- 

 izations, not to be open to all new facts and investiga- 

 tions. But where were the facts? Darwin admitted 

 the difficulties in his theory, which he tries to explain 

 away, not by well-grounded facts and careful observa- 

 tions, but by various suppositions and many ifs; and 

 these through frequent repetition seem to become estab- 

 lished truths in his mind, and are used as arguments. 

 On the contrary, Agassiz had gathered together, dur- 



