412 TH E BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



take such a big leap at once, with their trans- 

 mitted inheritance of old doctrines ? But Lyell 

 and Hooker will also evolve, though they too 

 must have time, like the rest of animated ex- 

 istence. 



Now it is a curious fact that his foregoing 

 statement runs directly counter to what he. 

 says in the Introduction to his Origin of Spe- 

 cies, where he recognizes a goodly- number of 

 his predecessors in the matter of the gradual 

 modification of the species. His object there is 

 to show that his theme was in the air and had 

 been so for a good while. He adds a sug- 

 gestive note in the same place: "It is rather 

 a singular instance of the manner in which 

 similar views arise at about the same time, 

 that Goethe in Germany and Dr. Darwin in 

 England, and Geoffrey Saint-Hilare in 

 France, came to the same conclusion on the 

 origin of species in the years 1794-5. " The 

 mentioned Dr. Darwin was Charles Darwin's 

 grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, poet-natur- 

 alist as well as physician, from whom the 

 grandson may have derived a fair half of his 

 talent, to the exclusion of his ancestor's other 

 poetic half. But the fact above indicates that 

 distinguished men in Germany, France and 

 England, each independent of the other, more 

 than fifty years before the appearance of the 

 Origin of Species, had at least suggested its 



