74 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



vided with somewhat longer necks than their fellows. In time of 

 stress these giraffes could get food where others could not. 

 Hence they survived, and their progeny, also long-necked, gave 

 rise to animals with still further development in the same 

 direction. 1 



Neo-Lamarckians hold that new habits will 

 produce new organs. Thus, rejecting Darwin s 

 doctrine of selection as applied to this same in 

 teresting specimen at sight of which the clown pro 

 tested there was no such creature, Cunning 

 ham asks how the horns of the giraffe could have 

 been produced by this method, and then suggests 

 his own neo-Lamarckian explanation: &quot;What 

 then caused such excrescences to appear in the 

 ancestors of the horned ruminants? Butting with 

 the forehead would produce them, and no other 

 cause can be suggested that would. * 2 But 

 enough said, though we may mention here with 

 that Darwinian champion, August Weismann, 

 that there is no evidence that acquired character 

 istics are ever transmitted. So we leave these 

 contending evolutionists to their own struggle, 

 like two stags with inter-locked antlers. 



The theory of Lamarck was championed in the 

 lists by the two St. Hilaires, Etienne and Isidore 

 Geoffroy. A series of sharp conflicts between 

 these early evolutionists and the great scientist 

 Cuvier now took place, the latter stanchly defend- 



1 &quot;A Century of Scientific Thought,&quot; pp. 68, 69. 

 3 Cunningham s Transl. of Eimer s &quot;Organic Evolution,&quot; 

 Preface ; Windle, Ibid. 



