186 DISCOVERY 



in the course of time was Sir Walter Raleigh. In his 

 History of the World (1621), written during his imprison- 

 ment, referring to the days of the Flood, he said, " But 

 it is manifest, and undoubtedly true, that many of the 

 Species, which now seeme differing, and of several kindes, 

 were not then in rerum natura " ; and he remarked that 

 he could see no difference, except in size, between the 

 cat of Europe and the ounce of India, the dog-fish and 

 the shark, the dog and the wolf. 



Buffon, the French naturalist, who is sometimes given 

 the credit of originating modern views of evolution, did 

 not go much farther than this nearly a century and a 

 half later. He surveyed natural history in a series of 

 sumptuous and comprehensive volumes, and inspired 

 interest in it by his animated style and bold speculation, 

 but though he suggested that new species of animals 

 and plants might be produced by progressive change, 

 and that all quadrupeds might have come from a few 

 original forms, he did not indicate how the transforma- 

 tion could have taken place. Other naturalists and 

 philosophers who speculated upon the problems of 

 evolution in the eighteenth century were Goethe, who 

 held that " the more perfect organic natures, from 

 fishes to mammals, and man at their head, were formed 

 on one original type which still daily changes its form 

 by propagation," and Erasmus Darwin, who suggested 

 how successive generations of an organism might by 

 their actions or wants " New powers acquire, and larger 

 limbs assume." 



But while these and many other writers had accepted 

 the doctrine of evolution in organic life, none had shown 

 with any force how the development had taken place. 

 The first serious attempt to discover the law governing 

 evolutionary changes was made by Jean de Lamarck, 



