THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



Loves of the Plants, which appeared in 1800 and 

 would have learned from the translator this new 

 cause of mutation. 



I have so far in this chapter traced the chrono- 

 logical development of geological and palaeontologic- 

 al ideas and have shown that the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion did not, and could not, become a question for 

 scientific inquiry until those ideas had been formu- 

 lated in their general modern outline. The critical 

 date for evolution I have placed specifically as the 

 year 1800, when Cuvier announced his discovery of 

 prehistoric, and now extinct, species, of elephants. 

 The logical plan, since I then passed to the ideas of 

 Buffon and of Dr. Darwin, would be to proceed now 

 to the discussion of Lamarck's hypothesis of evolu- 

 tion by the method of the inheritance of acquired 

 traits; but, I think, it is more expedient to make a 

 break in the argument and to close this chapter with a 

 brief account of the state of geological and palaeon- 

 tological knowledge when Darwin proposed his hy- 

 pothesis of natural selection and to follow this with 

 a summary of our knowledge to-day. 



The importance of geology to the doctrine of evo- 

 lution is immediate and profound. The preservation 

 of fossils is purely a geological problem and the esti- 

 mation of the time when these prehistoric animals 

 and plants lived can be made only by determining 

 when the different strata of rock were deposited. Thus 



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