12 HISTORICAL SKETCH 



times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon, 

 But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different peri- 

 ods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means 

 of the transformation of species, 1 need not here enter 

 on details. 



Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the 

 subject excited much attention. This justly-celebrated 

 naturalist first published his views in 1801; he much 

 enlarged them in 1809 in his "Philosophic Zoologique," 

 and subsequently, in 1815, in the Introduction to his 

 "Hist. Nat. des Animaux sans Vert^bres." In these 

 works he upholds the doctrine that all species, includ- 

 ing man, are descended from other species. He first did 

 the eminent service of arousing attention to the prob- 

 ability of all change in the organic, as well as in the 

 inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of 

 miraculous interposition. Lamarck seems to have been 

 chiefly led to his conclusion on the gradual change of 

 species, by the difficulty of distinguishing species and 

 varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in 

 certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic produc- 

 tions. With respect to the means of modification, he 

 attributed something to the direct action of the physical 

 conditions of life, something to the crossing of already 

 existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to 

 the effects of habit. To this latter agency he seems 

 to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature; — 

 sucfi as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on 

 the branches of trees. But he likewise believed in a 

 law of progressive development; and as all the forms 

 of life thus tend to progress, in order to account for 

 the existence at the present day of simple productions 



