VIEWS OF ERASMUS DARWIN 2h 
nomta, though he is careful, moro suo, never to 
mention this work by name. Paley’s success was 
probably one of the chief causes of the neglect 
into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell 
in this country.” Dr. Darwin died in the same year 
(1802) as that in which the Watural Theology was 
published. 
Krause also writes of the reception given by his 
contemporaries to his “ physio-philosophical ideas.” 
“They spoke of his wild and eccentric fancies, and 
the expression ‘ Darwinising’ (as employed, for ex- 
ample, by the poet Coleridge when writing on Still- 
ingfleet) was accepted in England nearly as the an- 
tithesis of sober biological investigation.” * 
The grandson of Erasmus Darwin had little appre- 
ciation of the views of him of whom, through atavic 
heredity, he was the intellectual and scientific child. 
“1t is. curious,” he says in the ° Historical Sketch,’ 
of the Origin of Spectes—* it is curious how largely 
my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the 
views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck 
in his Zoonomza (vol. i., pp. 500-510), published in 
1794.” It seemsa little strange that Charles Darwin 
did not devote a few lines to stating just what his 
ancestor’s views were, for certain of them, as we shall 
see, are anticipations of his own. 
The views of Erasrnus Darwin may thus be sum- 
marily stated : 
1. All animals have originated “from a single liv- 
ing filament’ (p. 230), or, stated in other words, re- 
* Krause, The Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin, footnote on 
p. 134: ‘‘See ‘ Athenzeum,’ March, 1875, p. 423.” 
