DARWIN. 



233 



acquaintance of Dr. Grant, who, on one occasion, 

 burst forth into high praise of the doctrines of 

 Lamarck. Darwin Jiad even earlier read the Zoo- 

 nomia, but without receiving any effect from it. 

 " Nevertheless," he says, " it is probable that the 

 hearing, rather early in life, such views maintained 

 and praised, may have favoured my upholding them 

 in a different form in my Origin of Species." It is 

 very evident from all Darwin's criticisms of Lamarck 

 that he never studied him carefully in the original, 

 so that all he owed at this time to his sfrandfather 

 and to Lamarck was the general idea of the evolu- 

 tion of life. Later, however, on the Beagle, he 

 took with him Lyell's Principles of Geology, in 

 which Lamarck's doctrines are admirably set forth 

 and fully discussed, so that there is little doubt that 

 the problem of transformation was, after all, most 

 strongly brought to him by Lamarck indirectly 

 through Lyell's able treatment. In 1834, during 

 the voyage, Darwin was still a special creationist, 

 yet the problem of mutability haunted him, as 

 it was brought home by the strong evidences of 

 change which met him on every side. He says : — 



" I had been deeply impressed by the discovery in the Pampean 

 collection of great fossil animals covered with armour, like that on 

 the existing .\rmadillos ; secondly, by the manner in which closely 

 allied animals replaced one another in proceeding southwards over 

 the Continent ; and thirdly, by the South- American character of 

 most of the products of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more 

 especially by the manner in which they differed on each island of 

 the group, none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a 



