VIEWS OF GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE 215 
differ from them according “to the degree of the 
modifying power.” * Again, he says, ‘The animals 
living to-day have been derived by a series of unin- 
terrupted generations from the extinct animals of the 
antediluvian world.” + He gave as an example the 
crocodiles of the present day, which he believed to 
have descended from the fossil forms. While he 
admitted the possibility of one type passing into 
another, separated by characters of more than generic 
value, he always, according to his son Isidore, re- 
jected the view which made all the living species 
descend “d'une espice antediluvienne primitive.” t 
It will be seen that Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s views were 
chiefly based on paleontological evidence. He was 
throughout broad and philosophical, and his eloquent 
demonstration in his Phzlosophie anatomigue of the 
doctrine of homologies served to prepare the way for 
modern morphology, and affords one of the founda- 
tion stones on which rests the theory of descent. 
Though temporarily vanquished in the debate with 
Cuvier, who was a forceful debater and represented 
the views then prevalent, a later generation acknowl- 
edges that he was in the right, and remembers him 
as one of the founders of evolution. 
* Recherches sur l’ Organisation des Gavials (Mémoires du Muséum 
ad’ [Tistoire naturelle, xii., p. 97 (1825). 
+ Sur LInfluence du Monde ambiant, p. 74. 
t Dictionnaire de la Conversation, xxxi., p. 487, 1836 (quoted by I. 
Geoffroy St. Hilaire); Histoire nat. gén, des Regnes organiques, ii., 
2° partie ; also Résumé, p. 30 (1859). 
