74 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



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

 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: "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 def end- 



1 "A Century of Scientific Thought," pp. 68, 69. 

 3 Cunningham's Transl. of Eimer's "Organic Evolution," 

 Preface ; Windle, Ibid. 



