RISE OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 421 



formal, forcible, and scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. 

 The- result is that the tentative views of Buffon, which have 

 to be with much research extracted from the forty-four vol- 

 umes of his works, would now be regarded as in a degree 

 superficial and valueless. But they appeared thirty -four 

 years before Lamarck's theory, and though not epoch-making. 



Fig. 117. — Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802. 



they are such as will render the name of Buffon memorable 

 for all time." (Packard.) 



Erasmus Darwin (Fig. 117) was the greatest of Lamarck's 

 predecessors. In 1794 he published the Zoonomia. In this 

 work he stated ten principles; among them he vaguely 

 suggested the transmission of acquired characteristics, the 

 law of sexual selection — or the law of battle, as he called it — 



