Vi HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. Bn' as his 

 opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he 

 does not enter on the causes or means of the transforma- 

 tion of species, I need not here enter on details. 



Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the 

 subject excited much attention. This justly celebrated 

 naturalist first published his views in 1801; he much en- 

 larged them in 1809 in his " Philosophic Zoologique/^ and 

 subsequently, 1815, in the Introduction to his *'Hist. Kat. 

 des Animaux sans Vertebres." In these works he upholds 

 the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended 

 from other species. He first did the eminent service of 

 arousing attention to the probability of all change in tlie 

 organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result 

 of law, and not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck 

 seems to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the 

 gradual change of species, by the difficulty of distinguish- 

 ing species and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation 

 of forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic 

 productions. With respect to the means of modification, 

 he attributed something to the direct action of the ph3'S- 

 ieal conditions of life, something to the crossing of 

 already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that 

 is, to the etiects of habit. To this latter agency he seems 

 to attribute all the beautiful adaj^tations in nature; such 

 as the long ne'3k of the girafl'e for browsing on the branches 

 of trees. But he likewise believed in a law of progressive 

 development; and as all the forms of life thus tend to 

 progress, in order to account for the existence at the 

 present day of simple productions, he maintains that such 

 forms are now spontaneous!}' generated.* 



Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as is stated in his ^^Life," writ- 

 ten by his son, suspected, as early as 1795, that what we 

 call species are various degenerations of the same type. It 



* I have taken the date of the first publication of Lamarck from 

 Isidore Geoifroy Saint-Hilaire's ("Hist. Nat. Generale," torn, ii. p= 

 405, 1859) excellent history of opinion on this subject. In this work 

 a full account is given of Buffon's conclusions on the same subject. 

 It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus DarAvin, 

 anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck 

 in his "Zoonomia" (vol. i. pp. 500-510), published in 1704. Accord- 

 ing to Isid. Geoft'roy there is no doubt that Goethe was an extreme 

 pOFiasan ci amilax views^ as shown in the iartroduclaon fco a woa-k 



