THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE. 117 



feet would have been incapable of moving their 

 bodies, there resulted a cessation of use of these 

 parts, which has finally caused them to totally dis- 

 appear, although they were originally part of the 

 plan of organization in these animals." The discov- 

 ery of an efficient cause of modifications, which 

 Lamarck refers to the efforts of the creatures them- 

 selves, has placed his speculations in the museum of 

 biological curiosities; but sharp controversy rages 

 to-day over the question raised in Lamarck's fourth 

 proposition, namely, the transmission of characters 

 acquired by the parent during its lifetime to the 

 offspring. This burning question between Weismann 

 and his opponents, involving the serious problem of 

 heredity, will remain unsettled till a long series of 

 observations supply material for judgment. 



Lamarck, poor, neglected, and blind in his old 

 age, died in 1829. Both Cuvier, who ridiculed him, 

 and Goethe, who never heard of him, passed away 

 three years later. The year following his death, when 

 Darwin was an undergraduate at Cambridge, Lyell 

 published his Principles of Geology, a work destined 

 to assist in paving the way for the removal of one 

 difficulty attending the solution of the theory of the 

 origin of species, namely, the vast period of time for 

 the life-history of the globe which that theory de- 

 mands. As Lyell, however, was then a believer 

 although, like a few others of his time, of wavering 

 type in the fixity of species, he had other aims in 

 view than those to which his book contributed. But 



