LAMARCK’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 247 
it susceptible, has traced twenty-six zodlogical divi- 
sions on the dry parts of the globe, and eighteen 
over the ocean; but there are many other influences 
than those which depend on localities and tempera- 
tures. 
“ Everything tends, then, to prove my assertion— 
namely, that it is not the form either of the body or 
of its parts which has given rise to habits and to the 
mode of life of animals, but, on the contrary, it is the 
habits, the mode of life, and all the other influential 
circumstances which have with time produced the 
form of the bodies and organs of animals. With new 
forms new faculties have been acquired, and gradually 
nature has arrived at the state where we actually 
See it, 
‘Minally.as it is only at that extremity of the 
animal kingdom where occur the most simply organ- 
ized animals that we meet those which may be re- 
garded as the true germs of animality, and it is the 
same at the same end of the vegetable series; is it not 
at this end of the scale, both animal and vegetable, 
that nature has commenced and recommenced with- 
out ceasing the first germ of her living production? 
Who is there, in a word, who does not see that the 
process of perfection of those of these first germs 
which circumstances have favored will gradually and 
after the lapse of time give rise to all the degrees of 
perfection and of the composition of the organization, 
from which will result this multiplicity and this 
diversity of living beings of all orders with which the 
exterior surface of our globe is almost everywhere 
filled or covered ? 
“Indeed, if the manner (wsage) of life tends to de- 
velop the organization, and even to form and multiply 
the organs, as the state of an animal which has just 
been born proves it, compared to that where it finds 
itself when it has reached the term where its organs 
