374 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



from science to science from Astronomy to Geology, from 

 Geology to Biology. The idea in one form or another is as 

 old as history, but for all practical purposes the biologist 

 Lamarck, during the early part of the nineteenth century, 

 formulated the first consistently worked out theory of organic 

 evolution. But the evidence he presented was in many cases 

 neither happily selected nor convincingly presented and it 

 was laughed out of court by biologists and laymen alike. 

 Lamarck's evolution factor was essentially the change of the 

 organism through the use and disuse of parts, the physiologi- 

 cal response of the organism to new needs offered by new con- 

 ditions of life. And these changes, somatic in origin, he be- 

 lieved were transmitted to the progeny. As we know, to- 

 day little or no value is placed on such somatic changes 

 as evolution factors, because there is no evidence that they 

 are heritable. But this weak point was not the one which 

 caused the rejection of the theory by Lamarck's contempo- 

 raries. The various antagonistic influences can be summed 

 up by saying, the time was not ripe for evolution. 



Then a generation later appeared Charles Darwin in 

 England. With a better background prepared for him through 

 the headway being made by the evolution theory in geology, 

 he did two things. He presented an overwhelming mass of 

 data which could be explained most reasonably by assuming 

 the origin of existing species by descent with modification 

 from other species. And he offered as an explanation of the 

 origin of species the theory of "NATURAL SELECTION, or the 

 preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." It 

 was the combination of the facts and the theory to account for 

 the facts which won the thinking world to organic evolution. 



What, in brief, was the theory? In the first place, without 

 discussing the cause of variations, Darwin showed the great 

 amount of variation in nature. And any and all kinds of 



