422 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



protective coloration, etc. His work received some notice 

 from scholars. Paley's Natural Theology, for illustration, 

 was written against it, although Paley is careful not to men- 

 tion Darwin or his work. The success of Paley's book is 

 probably one of the chief causes for the neglect into which 

 the views of Buffon and Erasmus Darwin fell. 



Inasmuch as Darwin's conclusions were published before 

 Lamarck's book, it would be interesting to determine whether 

 or not Lamarck was influenced by him. The careful con- 

 sideration of this matter leads to the conclusion that Lamarck 

 drew his inspiration directly from nature, and that points of 

 similarity between his views and those of Erasmus Darwin 

 are to be looked upon as an example of parallelism in 

 thought.- It is altogether likely that Lamarck was wholly un- 

 acquainted with Darwin's work, which had been published 

 in England. 



Goethe's connection with the rise of evolutionary thought 

 is in a measure incidental. In 1790 he published his Meta- 

 morphosis of Plants, showing \ that flowers are modified 

 leaves. This doctrine of metamorphosis of parts he presently 

 applied to the animal kingdom, and brought forward 

 his famous, but erroneous, vertebrate theory of the skull. 

 As he meditated on the extent of modifications there arose 

 in his mind the conviction that all plants and animals have 

 been evolved from the modification of a few parental types. 

 Accordingly he should be accorded a place in the history of 

 evolutionary thought. 



Opposition to Lamarck's Views. — Lamarck's doctrine, 

 which was published in definite form in 1809, has been 

 already outlined. We may well inquire, Why did not his 

 views take hold ? In the first place, they were not accepted 

 by Cuvier. Cuvier's opposition was strong and vigorous, 

 and succeeded in causing the theory of Lamarck to be com- 

 pletely neglected by the French people. Again, we must 



