RISE OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 



421 



formal, forcible, and scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. 

 The result is that the tentative views of Buff on, which have 

 to be with much research extracted from the fortv-four vol- 

 umes of his works, would now be regarded as in a degree 

 superficial and valueless. But they appeared thirty-four 

 years before Lamarck's theory, and though not epoch-making, 



Fig. 117. — Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802. 



they are such as will render the name of Buff on memorable 

 for all time." (Packard.) 



Erasmus Darwin (Fig. 117) was the greatest of Lamarck's 

 predecessors. In 1794 he pubhshed the Zoonomia. In this 

 work he stated ten principles; among them he vaguely 

 suggested the transmission of acquired characteristics, the 

 law of sexual selection — or the law of battle, as he called it — 



