X OBITUARY 277 



the region in which the ark stranded after the 

 subsidence of the deluge. It is true that the 

 geologists had drawn attention to a good many 

 tolerably serious difficulties in the way of the 

 diluvial part of this hypothesis, no less than to the 

 supposition that the work of creation had occupied 

 only a brief space of time. But even those, such 

 as Lyell, who most strenuously argued in favour 

 of the sufficiency of natural causes for the pro- 

 duction of the phenomena of the inorganic world, 

 held stoutly by the hypothesis of creation in the 

 case of those of the world of life. 



For persons who were unable to feel satisfied 

 with the fashionable doctrine, there remained only 

 two alternatives the hypothesis of spontaneous 

 generation, and that of descent with modification. 

 The former was simply the creative hypothesis 

 with the creator left out ; the latter had already 

 been propounded by De Maillet and Erasmus 

 Darwin, among others ; and, later, systematically 

 expounded by Lamarck. But in the eyes of the 

 naturalist of the " Beagle " (and, probably, in those 

 of most sober thinkers), the advocates of transmu- 

 tation had done the doctrine they expounded more 

 harm than good. 



Darwin's opinion of the scientific value of the 

 " Zoonomia " has already been mentioned. His 

 verdict on Lamarck is given in the following pas- 

 sage of a letter to Lyell (March, 1863) : 



" Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a 



