172 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



for the manufacture of new species out of all relation 

 to the old. 



Biassed, however, by their previous education, the 

 great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative 

 act to account for the appearance of each new group of 

 organisms. Doubtless numbers of them were clear- 

 headed enough to see that this was no explanation at 

 all that, in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the 

 introduction of a greater difficulty, to account for a 

 less. But, having nothing to offer in the way of ex- 

 planation, they for the most part held their peace. 

 Still the thoughts of reflecting men naturally and 

 necessarily simmered round the question. De Maillet, 

 a contemporary of Newton, has been brought into 

 notice by Professor Huxley as one who ' had a notion of 

 the modifiability of living forms.' The late Sir Benja- 

 min Brodie, a man of highly philosophic mind, often 

 drew my attention to the fact that, as early as 1794, 

 Charles Darwin's grandfather was the pioneer of Charles 

 Darwin.* In 1801, and in subsequent years, the cele- 

 brated Lamarck, who, through the vigorous exposition 

 of his views by the author of the ' Vestiges of Creation,' 

 rendered the public mind perfectly familiar with the 

 idea of evolution, endeavoured to show the development 

 of species out of changes of habit and external con- 

 dition. In 1813 Dr. "Wells, the founder of our present 

 theory of Dew, read before the Eoyal Society a paper in 

 which, to use the words of Mr. Darwin, ' he distinctly 

 recognises the principle of natural selection; and this 

 is the first recognition that has been indicated.' The 

 thoroughness and skill with which Wells pursued his 

 work, and the obvious independence of his character, 

 rendered him long ago a favourite with me; and it 

 gave me the liveliest pleasure to alight upon this ad- 



* ' Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp. 500-510. 



