410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



influenced by "what he might see in nature in favor of the variability 

 of the species. "None of these French theories," he was told (I 

 quote from memory), which meant : " Nothing of the ideas of Buffon, 

 Lamarck, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, according to whom the direct 

 action of the ever-changing conditions of life originated the infinite 

 variety of vegetable and animal forms peopling the globe." 



Darwin carefully observed nature and studied its life, and he felt 

 the spell of " the French ideas." And both in 1842, when he wrote 

 a first sketch of his conceptions about evolution, 1 and in 1859, when 

 he published his Origin of Species, where he insisted upon the domi- 

 nating part played in the evolution of new forms by natural selec- 

 tion, he indicated at the same time the part that is played by the 

 Buffon-Lamarckian factor — the direct action of environment. Lyell 

 even reproached him with the " Lamarckism " of the Origin of Spe- 

 cies. However, at that time Darwin postponed a thorough discus- 

 sion of the subject to a work on variation, for which he was collect- 

 ing materials. Only nine years later he published the first part of 

 this work; but in the meantime, already in the third edition of the 

 Origin of Species, he felt bound to introduce important matter deal- 

 ing with the direct action of environment. His great work on Vari- 

 ation, as well as the sixth edition of Origin of Species, contained, in 

 fact, a straightforward recognition of the importance of the environ- 

 ment factor in the evolution of new species. He did not hesitate to 

 admit that in certain cases "definite" and "cumulative" variation 

 under the influence of environment could be so effective for origi- 

 nating new varieties and species adapted to the new environment, 

 that the role of natural selection would be quite secondary in these 

 cases. 



The reasons for such a modification of opinion were acknowledged 

 by Darwin himself. In the fifties there were no works dealing on a 

 scientific basis with variation in nature; while experimental mor- 

 phology, although it had been recommended already by Bacon, 2 was 

 called into existence after the appearance of Darwin's work. Still, 

 the new data, rapidly accumulated in these two branches of research 

 after 1859, were such as to convince Darwin of the importance of the 

 direct action of environment, and he frankly acknowledged it. 



Of course he did not abandon the fundamental conception of his 

 Origin of Species. He continued to maintain that a purely indi- 

 vidual, accidental variation could supply natural selection with the 



1 The Foundations of the Origin of Species, a sketch written in 1842. Edited by his 

 son Francis Darwin. Cambridge, 190J). 



2 In Sylva Sylvarum (Works, London, 1824, sec. 526) the great founder of inductive 

 science wrote : " First, therefore, you must make account, that if you will have one plant 

 change Into another, you must have the nourishment overrule [the inherited dispositions]. 

 * * * You shall do well, therefore, to take marsh herbs and plant them upon tops of 

 hills and champaigns; and such plants as require much moisture, upon sandy and very 

 dry grounds, * * * This is the first rule for transmutation of plants." 



