112 HAECKEL 



transformations of species, development of new 

 forms from older ones by adaptation to new, 

 naturally modified conditions. Even zoology and 

 botany were without the finger of God from the 

 earliest days. 



Of course there was no trace of these latter 

 deductions in Lyell. But they pressed themselves 

 with an irresistible and decisive force on the mind 

 of one of his first readers, Darwin. 



He took Lyell's book with him to South 

 America. Step by step the logic of it forced him 

 to admit that this was what must have taken place 

 somewhere. First the idea of " extinct species" 

 became a concrete picture to him there, a sort of 

 diabolic vision. The whole substratum of the pam- 

 pas is one colossal tomb of strange monsters. The 

 bones lie bare at every outcrop. Megatheria, or 

 giant-sloths, as large as elephants, and with thigh- 

 bones three times as thick as that of the elephant, 

 able to break off branches in the primitive forests 

 with their paws : armadilloes as big as rhinoceroses, 

 with coats as hard as stone and curved like 

 barrels; gigantic llamas, the macrouchenias, 

 compared with which the modern specimens are 

 Liliputians ; mastodons and wild horses, of which 

 America was entirely free even in the days of 

 Columbus, and lion-like carnivores with terrible 

 sabre-teeth. There they all are to-day extinct, 

 lost, buried in the deserted cemetery of the 

 pampas-loam. 



When the young Darwin stood by these groves, 

 like Hamlet, he did not know how closely this 



