108 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



Evolution. 



Modern evolution, or the theory of life continuously 

 descending from life with change, may be said to have 

 had its first marked development in Comte de Buffon 

 (1707-1788), a man of wealth and station, yet an indus- 

 trious compiler, a brilliant writer, and a popularizer of 

 science. He was not, however, a true scientific investi- 

 gator, and his monument to fame is his Histoire Nat- 

 urelle, in forty-four volumes, 1749-1804. A. S. Packard 

 in his book on Lamarck, his Life and Work, 1901, con- 

 cludes in regard to Buffon as follows: 



"The impression left on the mind, after reading Buffon, is 

 that even if he threw out these suggestions and then retracted 

 them, from fear of annoyance or even persecution from the 

 bigots oi his time, he did not himself always take them seriously, 

 but rather jotted them down as passing thoughts . . . They 

 appeared thirty-four years before Lamarck 's theory, and though 

 not epoch-making, they are such as will render the name of 

 Buffon memorable for all time." 



Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829) may justly be 

 regarded as the founder of the doctrine of modern evo- 

 lution. Previous to 1794 he was a believer in the fixity 

 of species, but by 1800 he stood definitely in favor of 

 evolution. Locy in his Biology and its Makers, 1908, 

 states his theories in the following simplified form : 



"Variations of organs, according to Lamarck, arise in animals 

 mainly through use and disuse, and new organs have their origin 

 in a physiological need. A new need felt by the animal [due 

 to new conditions in its life, or the environment] expresses 

 itself on the organism, stimulating growth and adaptations in a 

 particular direction. ' ' 



To Lamarck, "inheritance was a simple, direct trans- 

 mission of those superficial changes that arise in organs 

 within the lifetime of an individual owing to use and 

 disuse." This part of his theory has come to be known 

 as "the inheritance of acquired characters." 



Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), a peer of France, was a 

 decided believer in the fixity of species and in their crea- 

 tion through divine acts. In 1796 he began to see that 

 among the fossils so plentiful about Paris many were of 



