68 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



CHAPTEK VII. 



PRE-BUFFONIAN EVOLUTION, AND SOME GERMAN 

 WRITERS. 



LET us now proceed to the fuller development of the 

 foregoing sketch. 



" Undoubtedly," says Isidore Geoffrey, " from the 

 most ancient times many philosophers have imagined 

 vaguely that one species can be transformed into another. 

 This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian 



school from the sixth century before our era 



Undoubtedly also the same opinion reappeared on 

 several occasions in the middle ages, and in modern 

 times ; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, 

 where the transmutation of animal and vegetable species, 

 and that of metals, are treated as complementary to one 

 another. In modern times we again find it alluded to 

 by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose 

 boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 

 ' incontestable that plants sometimes degenerate so far 

 as to become plants of another species,' Bacon did not 

 hesitate to try and put his theory into practice. He 

 tried, in 1635, to give ' the rules ' for the art of changing 

 ' plants of one species into those of another.' " 



This must be an error. Bacon died in 1626. The 

 passage of Bacon referred to is in ' Nat. Hist.,' Cent. vi. 



