THE HISTORY OF EVOLUTION 9 



connection with the maintenance of the primitive idea of evohition. 

 Their work was destined, however, because of the very nature of 

 purely philosophical limitations, to add nothing more than corol- 

 laries to the points so w(41 c^xpn^ssed by the Greeks. 



Results of the New Methods. The accumulation of scientific 

 data by observation and experiment could hardly fail to give a 

 different impetus to scientific progress. The old desire to explain 

 life and the relationship of living things was maintained, but new 

 methods of study disclosed such a storehouse of accurate informa- 

 tion to be had for the seeking that the observation and recording 

 of material facts came to be, for the time, the prevailing tendency. 

 We find that knowledge of natural facts accumulated rapidly 

 while philosophical interpretation entered a fallow period which 

 lasted, with a few interruptions of importance, for many years. 

 Finally Darwin, at the middle of the nineteenth century, placed 

 the old evolution idea on a basis of sound scientific data, and thus 

 brought it for all time into the realm of ])iology. 



Early Evolutionists. Among the scientists of the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries prior to Darwin, Linnaeus (1707- 

 1778), Buffon (1701-1788), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), La- 

 marck (1744-1829), and Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), made notable 

 contributions to biology. None of these was destined to bring the 

 theory permanently before the world, but their theories were 

 valuable and show increasing accuracy in the interpretation of 

 natural phenomena. 



Linnaeus' chief contribution to biology was the plan of classifi- 

 cation, which still prevails, together with the same binomial 

 system of nomenclature now employed. Even his classification of 

 organisms left its impress on that still in use, although it has been 

 almost completely concealed by the corrections and amplification 

 of the intervening years. In spite of the fact that in working out 

 his classification of plants and animals he did much to illustrate 

 their phylogenetic relationships, he did it unknowingly. He be- 

 lieved firmly in special creation as the origin of primary forms, al- 

 though to this belief he appended a theory of development of the 

 various species from a limited number of such forms. 



Buffon "was not a true investigator," although "of a more 

 philosophical mind than many of his contemporaries" (Locy). 

 Buffon believed in the gradual evolution of species, but in spite 

 of the fact that he retained this belief throughout his life he was 



