REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW: 393 



Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to the 

 general doctrine of Evolution,"* and that Erasmus 

 Darwin "can hardly be said to have made any real 

 advance on his predecessors."! 



Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus 

 Darwin, and still less, apparently, about Buffon.J Pro- 

 fessor Tyndall, in 1878, spoke of Evolution as "Dar- 

 win's theory" ; and I have just read Mr. Grant Allen 

 as saying that Evolutionism " is an almost exclusively 

 English impulse."|| 



Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I 

 have observed several of the so-called men of science 

 among them Professor Huxley and Mr. Romanes airing 

 Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till 

 within the last three years. I maintain that " men of 

 science" were, and still are, very ignorant concerning the 

 history of Evolution ; but, whether they were or were 

 not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,' for 

 them ; I wrote for the general public, who have been 

 kind enough to testify their appreciation of it in a 

 sufficiently practical manner. 



The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met ' Evolu- 

 tion, Old and New/ has been so fully dealt with in my 

 book, ' Unconscious Memory ; ' in the 'Athenseum,' Jan. 

 31, 1880 ; the ' St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880 ; and 

 ' Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, 

 more especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, 

 admitted that he has no defence to make. 



* p. 748 t Ibid. + See pp. 71-73. 



{ ' Nineteenth Century ' for November, pp. 360, 361. 

 || 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882. 



