NAUDIN. 225 



the production of the adaptations of Nature. The 

 following most interesting passage in Naudin's 

 paper, quoted below, is that in which Quatrefages 

 and Varigny believe that this author anticipated 

 the theory of Natural Selection : — 



" We do not think that Nature has made her species in a 

 different fashion from that in which we proceed ourselves in order 

 to make our variations. To tell the truth, we have practised her 

 very method. When we wish, out of some zoological or botanical 

 species, to obtain a variety which answers to such or such of our 

 needs, we select {choisissons) out of the large number of the 

 individuals of this species, so as to make them the starting-point 

 of a new stirp, those which seem already to depart from the 

 specific type in the direction which suits us ; and by a rational 

 and continuous sorting of the descendants, after an undetermined 

 number of generations, we create types or artificial species, which 

 correspond more or less with the ideal type we had imagined, and 

 which transmit the acquired characters to their descendants in 

 proportion to the number of generations upon which our efforts 

 have been bearing. Such is, in our opinion, the method followed 

 by Nature, as well as by ourselves. She has wished to create 

 races conformable to her needs ; and with a comparatively small 

 number of primitive types, she has successively, and at different 

 periods, given birth to all the animal and vegetable species which 

 people the earth." . . . 



We cannot find in this passage clear proof of 

 anticipation of Darwinism.^ The Survival of the 

 Fittest, as due to the possession of favourable varia- 

 tions, was evidently not in Naudin's mind ; still less 



1 This was Darwin's opinion after carefully studying Naudin's paper 

 in 1859: "I declare I cannot see a much closer approach to Wallace and 

 me in Naudin than in Lamarck, — we all agree in modification and descent. 

 . . . But I cannot find one word like the struggle for Existence and Natural 

 Selection." {Lift and Letters, ist ed. II., p. 247.) 



