NEOLAMARCK/ISM 413 
quence of external stimuli is itself a matter which 
deserves to be studied, and which we have no right 
to reject without investigation, without observa- 
tions, or to treat as a ridiculous dream; Lamarck 
would doubtless have made it more readily accepted, 
if he had not thought it well to pass over the inter- 
mediate steps by meansof wants. Itis incontestable 
that by lack of exercise organs atrophy and disappear.” 
Finally, says Perrier: ‘* Without doubt the real 
mechanism of the improvement ( ferfectzonnement) 
of organisms has escaped him [Lamarck], but neither 
has Darwin explained it. The law of natural selec- 
tion is not the indication of a process of transforma- 
tion of animals; it is the expression of the total 
results. It states these results without showing us 
how they have been brought about. We indeed 
see that it tends to the preservation of the most per- 
fect organisms; but Darwin does not show us how 
the organisms themselves originated. This is a void 
which we have only during these later years tried to 
fill’? (p. 90). 
Drs. j. A. jefiries, author of an essay On the 
Epidermal System of Birds,’’ in a later paper * thus 
frankly expresses his views as to the relations of 
natural selection to the Lamarckian factors. Re- 
ferring to Darwin’s case of the leg bones of domestic 
ducks compared with those of wild ducks, and the 
atrophy of disused organs, he adds: 
‘In this case, as with most of Lamarck’s laws, 
Darwin has taken them to himself wherever natural 
selection, sexual selection, and the like have fallen 
to the ground. 
‘* Darwin’s natural selection does not depend, as 
***Tamarckism and Darwinism.” Proceedings Boston Society 
Natural History, xxv., 1890, pp. 42-49. 
