xii. J Cftt right 0f Spmts. 291 



Of the influence of selection Lamarck has as little 

 notion, and he makes no use of the wonderful phseno- 

 mena which are exhibited by domesticated animals, and 

 illustrate its powers. The vast influence of Cuvier was 

 employed against the Lamarckian views, and, as the 

 untenability of some of his conclusions was easily 

 shown, his doctrines sank under the opprobium of 

 scientific, as well as of theological, heterodoxy. Nor 

 have the efforts made of late years to revive them 

 tended to re-establish their credit in the minds of sound 

 thinkers acquainted with the facts of the case ; indeed 

 it may be doubted whether Lamarck has not suffered 

 more from his friends than from his foes. 



Two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question 

 if even the strongest supporters of the special creation 

 hypothesis had not, now and then, an uneasy conscious- 

 ness that all was not right, their position seemed more 

 impregnable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength, 

 at any rate by the obvious failure of all the attempts 

 which had been made to carry it. On the other hand, 

 however much the few, who thought deeply on the 

 question of species, might be repelled by the generally 

 received dogmas, they saw no way of escaping from 

 them, save by the adoption of suppositions, so little jus- 

 tified by experiment or by observation, as to be at least 

 equally distasteful. 



The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle 

 condition of uneasy scepticism ; which last, however 

 unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was obviously the only 

 justifiable state of mind under the circumstances. 



Such being the general ferment in the minds of 

 naturalists, it is no wonder that they mustered strong in 

 the rooms of the Linnaean Society, on the 1st of July of 

 the year 1858, to hear two papers by authors living 

 on opposite sides of the globe, working out their results 



a 2 



