448 GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



devotion. Agassiz' researches cover a wide field, but per- 

 haps his most important contribution to zoology is his work 

 on fossil fishes. It is interesting to note that he was the last 

 great zoologist to hold out against the evolutionary views 

 which came in with the epoch-making work of Charles 

 Darwin. 



We must go back for a moment to consider the beginning 

 of the evolutionary views, which, as we have said on page 101, 

 are accepted in some form by practically all scientific men 

 to-day. Professor Osborn in the volume referred to in 

 the discussion of Buffon says that the Greek philosopher 

 Empedocles, of Agrigentum (495-435 B.C.), may justly be 

 called the father of the evolution idea, since he conceived of 

 animals and plants as arising through the fortuitous play of 

 the great forces of nature, love and hate, on the four elements, 

 fire, water, earth, and air. First appeared the plants; later, 

 after many trials, the animals, the latter not as complete 

 individuals but as parts of individuals. From the chance 

 meeting of parts came monstrous forms incapable of propa- 

 gation. After ceaseless trials Nature produced the fit and 

 perpetual tribes. Here is the germ, according to Professor 

 Osborn, of the survival of the fittest or of natural selection. 



Aristotle's conception has already been referred to. In one 

 form or another, evolutionary views were put forward by 

 philosophers and naturalists during the long period which 

 intervened between Greek thought and the time of Buffon. 

 These views, while interesting historically, need not detain 

 us now, nor can we stop to outline further Buffon's influence 

 on evolutionary thought. We must pass at once to the great 

 figure of Lamarck (1744-1829). We have already mentioned 

 (Chapter X, p. 108) the two factors of evolution with which 

 the name of Lamarck is associated, and have noted the fact 

 that Erasmus Darwin (1737-1802), grandfather of Charles 

 Darwin, seems to have anticipated Lamarck's views in part. 



