PALAEONTOLOGY AND GEOLOGY 



cause of variation is the desire of adapting themselves 

 to their environment which all animals have in order 

 to satisfy their craving for food and other needs. The 

 exertions, which animals thus undertake, produce per- 

 petual transformations in them and many of these 

 acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their 

 posterity. 



Although Dr. Darwin deserves the honour of orig- 

 inating the idea of the transmutation of species from 

 the cause of use and disuse, or as we now say the in- 

 heritance of acquired traits, the doctrine will always 

 be associated with the name of Lamarck, who, by 

 his great genius, changed the somewhat fugitive 

 work of Dr. Darwin into a scientific theory. The 

 views of the two authors are so nearly identical that 

 it has been a matter of great interest to determine 

 whether it was a case of independent discovery or 

 whether Lamarck knew the substance of Dr. Dar- 

 win's theory. Samuel Butler" states the problem by 

 asking how Lamarck remained a partisan of immu- 

 tability until 1801, although he, as Buffon's intimate 

 friend and tutor to his son, had been thoroughly con- 

 versant with Buffon's theory of descent with modifi- 

 cation for some years. His answer is that Lamarck, at 

 the time of his sudden conversion, did know the sub- 

 stance of the Zoonomia because he would almost cer- 

 tainly have heard of, and have seen, the French 

 translation by M. Deleuze of Darwin's poem, The 



"^^ Evolution, OH and New, p. 258. 



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