392 OBJECTIONS TO LAMARCK'S THEORY, CHAP. xx. 



pointed out in 1832, as the two great flaws in Lamarck's 

 attempt to explain the origin of species, first, that he had 

 failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new 

 organ in any species of animal or plant ; and secondly, that 

 variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or 

 assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had 

 never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently 

 remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be 

 sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of pro 

 ducing sterile hybrids, &c.* 



To this objection Lamarck would, no doubt, have answered 

 that there had not been time for bringing about so great an 

 amount of variation ; for when Cuvier and some other of his 

 contemporaries appealed to the embalmed animals and plants 

 taken from Egyptian tombs, some of them 3,000 years old, 

 which had not experienced in that long period the slightest 

 modification in their specific characters, he replied that the 

 climate and soil of the valley of the Nile had not varied in the 

 interval, and that there was therefore no reason for expecting 

 that we should be able to detect any change in the fauna and 

 flora. ' But if,' he went on to say, ' the physical geography, 

 temperature, and other conditions of life, had been altered in 

 Egypt as much as we know from geology has happened in 

 other regions, some of the same animals and plants would 

 have deviated so far from their pristine types as to be 

 thought entitled to take rank as new and distinct species.' 



Although I cited this answer of Lamarck, in my account 

 of his theory,f I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the 

 deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in 

 which geological changes have taken place, and the insigni 

 ficance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species, 

 and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were 



* Principles of Geology, 1st ed., vol. ii. ch. ii. 

 f Ibid., p. 587. 1832. 



