516 THE CHANGING WORLD 



Huxley once said that he "beheved in justification not by faith 

 but by experiment." In 1904 the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 

 ington, in order to make possible programs of scientific research 

 looking far into the future, established at Cold Spring Harbor, Long 

 Island, New York, a department under the significant title of Experi- 

 mental Evolution. This more recently has been renamed the 

 Department of Genetics, since it was realized that controlled 

 hybridization furnishes the most practical line of approach to the 

 larger problem of evolution. What has already been accomplished by 

 the remarkable staff of scientists at this unique station is a story of 

 world-wide interest. It is a very good sign that intellectual curiosity 

 does not let us rest simply with the evident conclusion that evolution 

 of organic life has occurred in the past, but that it seeks to go further 

 and tries to find out how evolution actually may come about. 



The Environmental Theory of Lamarck 



In the stormy days following the French Revolution, a famous 

 Frenchman, with his head in the clouds above the turmoil of human 

 history, brought out a book in which appeared the first attempt to 

 explain how evolution occurred. This was Jean Baptiste Lamarck 

 (1744-1829), whose book, La Philosophie Zoologique, appeared in 

 1809, the year Charles Darwin was born. 



Lamarck was the eleventh child of his parents. When a young 

 man, he ran away from the Jesuit College, where he was in training 

 for the priesthood, to become a soldier in the French army. He 

 distinguished himself for bravery on the field of battle, was disabled 

 for further military service, and returned to scholarly pursuits. 

 Devoting himself to botanical studies, he published important books 

 in this field, and was also instrumental in establishing the famous 

 Jar din des Plantes in Paris. In 1794, he was appointed to a chair 

 of Invertebrate Zoology in this Institution at the age of fifty years, 

 deserting botany to become a zoologist. His extensive observations 

 in zoology led him to formulate his theory of evolution, at a time 

 when everyone, including his influential fellow countryman, Georges 

 Cuvier (1769-1832), "Father of Comparative Anatomy," held to the 

 Linnaean idea of the constancy and independence of miraculously 

 created species. 



Lamarck's conception of the transformation of species may be 

 thought of as standing on three legs : the molding effects of en- 

 vironment ; the results of use and disuse ; and lastly, an inner urge 



