ERASMUS DARWIN. 



149 



I have carefully searched for these passages, and 

 find a most striking confirmation of Charles Dar- 

 win's well-known sentence : " It is curious how 

 largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, antic- 

 ipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion 

 of Lamarck in his Zoonomia." Among the pas- 

 sages above quoted, and in those following, we find 

 the whole framework and even in part the very 

 language of Lamarck's Four Laws. 



Dr. Darwin again illustrates his theory, speaking 

 of the Evolution of Man : — 



" Now as labour strengthens the muscles employed and in- 

 creases their bulk, it would seem that a few generations of labour 

 or indolence may in this respect change the form and tempera- 

 ment of the body." {Zoonomia, pp. 356, 501.) "Add to these 

 the various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their 

 early modes of exertion . . . which became hereditary." 



On the following page he applies the law of 

 transmission of acquired characters to the lower 

 animals. After speaking of the snout of the pig, 

 the trunk of the elephant, the rough tongues of 

 cattle, and beaks of birds, he says : — 



" All which seem to have been gradually produced during many 

 generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply 

 the want of food, and to have been delivered to their posterity 

 with constant improvement of them for the purposes acquired." 



As regards the origin of plants, he at one point 

 mentions the suarsrestion of Linneeus : " And that 

 from thence, as Linnzeus has conjectured in respect 



