WHEN DID LAMARCK’S VIEWS CHANGE? DOT 
ios) 
this that these evolutionary views were expressed in 
his first course, or in one of the earlier courses of 
zoological lectures—z.¢., soon after his appointment in 
1793—and if not then, at least one or two, or perhaps 
several, years before the year 1800? For even if the 
change in his views were comparatively sudden, he 
must have meditated upon the subject for months and 
even, perhaps, years, before finally committing himself 
to these views in print. So strong and bold-a thinker 
as Lamarck had already shown himself in these fields 
of thought, and one so inflexible and unyielding in 
holding to an opinion once formed as he, must have 
arrived at such views only after long reflection. 
There is also every reason to suppose that Lamarck’s 
theory of descent was conceived by himself alone, 
from the evidence which lay before him in the plants 
and animals he had so well studied for the preceding 
thirty years, and that his inspiration came directly 
from nature and not from Buffon, and least of all 
from the writings of Erasmus Darwin. 
