VIEWS OF ERASMUS DARWIN 378 



hedges, which they frequent; and moths and butterflies are 

 coloured like the flowers which they rob of their honey." 



" A proboscis of admirable structure has been acquired by the 

 bee, the moth, and the humming bird, for the purpose of 

 plundering the nectaries of flowers. All which seem to have 

 been formed by the original living filament, excited into action 

 by the necessities of the creatures, which possess them, and on 

 which their existence depends." 



In the following sentences we have at any rate a very close 

 approach to the idea of natural selection which forms the key- 

 note of the evolutionary theory as advocated by the illustrious 

 grandson of the writer : 



" A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted 

 in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females ; and these 

 have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose. . . . 

 So the horns of the stag are sharp to offend his adversary, but 

 are branched for the purpose of parrying or receiving the thrusts 

 of horns similar to his own, and have therefore been formed for 

 the purpose of combating other stags for the exclusive posses- 

 sion of the females ; who are observed, like the ladies in the 

 times of chivalry, to attend the car of the victor." 



" The final cause of this contest amongst the males seems to be, 

 that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the 

 species, which should thence become improved." 



Here the principle of selection seems to be clearly enough 

 recognized, at any rate that form thereof which Charles Darwin 

 afterwards distinguished as sexual selection. 



The great French philosophical biologist, 1 Jean Baptiste 

 Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was born in 

 1744 and died in 1829. His most celebrated work, the 

 " Philosophie Zoologique," which contains the fullest expression 

 of his mature views on the theory of organic evolution, was 

 published in 1809, but these views appear to have been first 

 announced to the world in the opening lecture of the Course of 

 Zoology given at the Natural History Museum in Paris in 1800, 



1 Lamarck was the originator of the term Biology for the Science of Living 

 Things. 



