CHARLES DARWIN AND HIS ANTECEDENTS 23 



'the offspring is termed a new animal, but is in truth a 

 branch or elongation of the parent, since a part of the 

 embry on-animal is or was a part of the parent, and 

 therefore may retain some of the habits of the parent 

 system.' He laid peculiar stress upon the hereditary 

 nattire of some acquired properties, such as the muscles 

 of dancers or jugglers, and the diseases incidental to 

 special occupations. Nay, he even anticipated his great 

 descendant in pointing out that varieties are often pro- 

 duced at first as mere ' sports ' or accidental variations, 

 as in the case of six-fingered men, five-clawed fowls, or 

 extra-toed cats, and are afterwards handed down, by 

 heredity to succeeding generations. Charles Darwin 

 would have added that if these new stray peculiarities 

 happened to prove advantageous to the species they 

 would be naturally favoured in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, while if they proved disadvantageous, or even 

 neutral, they would die out at once or be bred out in 

 the course of a few crosses. That last truth of natural 

 selection was the only cardinal one in the evolutionary 

 system on which Erasmus Darwin did not actually fore- 

 stall his more famous and greater namesake. For its 

 full perception, the discovery of Malthus had to be 

 collated with the speculations of Buffon. 



' When, we revolve in our minds,' says the eighteenth 

 century prophet of evolution, 'the great similarity of 

 structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, 

 as well quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, 

 as in mankind ; from the mouse and bat to the elephant 

 and whale ; one is led to conclude that they have alike 

 been produced from a similar living filament. In some 

 this filament in its advance to maturity has acquired 



