222 EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY v" 
facility in using it, he made the general assumption 
that the effort of an animal to exert an organ in a 
given direction tends to develop the organ in that. 
Becton. But a little consideration showed that, 
though Lamarck had seized what, as far it goes, is 
a true cause of modification, it is a cause the actual 
effects of which are wholly inadequate to account 
for any considerable modification in animals, and 
which can have no influence at all in the vegetable 
world ; and probably nothing contributed so much 
to disusdes evolution, in the early part of this 
century, as the floods of easy ridicule which were 
poured upon this part of Lamarck’s speculation. 
The theory of natural selection, or survival of the 
fittest, was suggested by Wells in 1813, and 
further slobasmied by Matthew in 1831. But the 
pregnant suggestions of these writers remained 
practically unnoticed and forgotten, until the theory _ 
was independently devised and promulgated by 
Darwin and Wallace in 1858, and the effect of its 
publication was immediate and profound. 
Those who were unwilling to accept evolution, 
without better grounds than such as are offered by 
Lamarck, or the author of that particularly un-— 
satisfactory book, the ‘ Vestiges of the Natural 
History of the Creation,’ and who therefore 
preferred to suspend their judgment on the 
question, found, in the principle of selective 
breeding, pursued in all its applications with 
marvellous knowledge and skill by Mr. Darwin, a 
