68 LIFE OF 



which thus would all in time gradually cease to be lowly, 

 their place being taken by new forms continually or 

 " spontaneously " generated. 



It does not appear that Lamarck would by any means 

 have sufficed to convince Darwin, judging from his 

 references to him in his Journal and the "Origin." 

 Here is the passage in which in the second edition of his 

 Journal he refers to the blindness of the Brazilian 

 Tucutuco, or Ctenomys, a rodent or gnawing mammal 

 with the habits of a mole : " Considering the strictly 

 subterranean habits of the Tucutuco, the blindness, though 

 so common, cannot be a very serious evil ; yet it appears 

 strange that any animal should possess an organ fre- 

 quently subject to be injured. Lamarck would have 

 been delighted with this fact had he known it when 

 speculating (probably with more truth than usual with 

 him) on the gradually acquired blindness of the Aspalax, 

 a gnawer living underground, and of the Proteus, a 

 reptile living in dark caverns filled with water, in both of 

 which animals the eye is in an almost rudimentary state, 

 and is covered with a tendinous membrane and skin. , . . 

 In the Tucutuco, which, I believe, never comes to the 

 surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger (than in 

 the mole), but often rendered blind and useless, though 

 without apparently causing any inconvenience to the 

 animal: no doubt Lamarck would have said that the 

 Tucutuco is now passing into the state of the Aspalax 

 and Proteus." Many years afterwards in the "Origin 

 of Species " Darwin referred to the " erroneous views and 

 grounds of opinion of Lamarck." 



No doubt some impulse to Darwin's views in this 



