PAPERS ON BIOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE 147 



change any more than Darwin claimed that his selection 

 produced the things selected. Lamarck said that animals 

 lived in the environment, and that the environment direc- 

 ted the actions of the animal, bnt that it did nothing of 

 itself to produce a change. To make his meaning clear, 

 Lamarck said : 



"Here it becomes necessary for me to explain the 

 meaning I attach to the expression circumstances in- 

 fluencing the form and structure of animals — namely, 

 that in becoming very different they change, with time, 

 both their form and organization by proportionate 

 modifications. Assuredly, if these expressions should 

 be taken literally, I should be accused of an error ; for 

 whatever may be the circumstances they do not 

 directly cause any modifications in the form and struc- 

 ture of animals." (Packard's translation, page 294; 

 Elliot's translation, page 107.) 



Here we have a clear statement which shows that La- 

 marck was not an environmentalist, and the other parts 

 of his writings bear out that statement. It is not what 

 is done to the animal by the environment, but, as we shall 

 see, it is what the animal does of itself to itself, which 

 counts. The environment is that which is outside of and 

 surrounds the animal. What the animal does represents 

 something occurring within the protoplasm of the cells 

 which compose the animal. It is a misconception to re- 

 fer to the action of an animal as being in the same class 

 of things as the environment. The two things stand in 

 contradistinction to each other. 



Lamarck was a contemporary with the later life of 

 Linnaeus, and was one of the pioneers in the classifica- 

 tion of plants and animals. In fact, he was the origin- 

 ator of a considerable part of the classification as it now 

 exists. After he had spent twenty-five years as a bot- 

 anist, largely in classifying the largest botanical collec- 

 tions then existing, he was placed in charge of the larg- 

 est zoological collection in the world. Here he spent 

 more years in classification, and among other things he 

 was the first to distinguish vertebrate from invertebrate 

 animals by the presence of the vertebral column. "The 



