16 Darwin's Predecessors 



to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture, Darwin said that 

 " he clearly saw the full force of the principle of natural selection." 

 In 1860 Darwin wrote — very characteristically — about this to Lyell : 

 "Mr Patrick Matthew publishes a long extract from his work on 

 Naval Timber and Arboriculture, published in 1831, in which he 

 briefly but completely anticipates the theory of Natural Selection. 

 I have ordered the book, as some passages are rather obscure, but it 

 is certainly, I think, a complete but not developed anticipation. 

 Erasmus always said that surely this would be shown to be the case 

 some day. Anyhow, one may be excused in not having discovered 

 the fact in a work on Naval Timber 1 ." 



De Quatrefages and De Varigny have maintained that the botanist 

 Naudin stated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1852. 

 He explains very clearly the process of artificial selection, and says 

 that in the garden we are following Nature's method. "We do not 

 think that Nature has made her species in a different fashion from 

 that in which we proceed ourselves in order to make our variations." 

 But, as Darwin said, "he does not show how selection acts under 

 nature." Similarly it must be noted in regard to several pre- 

 Darwinian pictures of the struggle for existence (such as Herder's, 

 who wrote in 1790 "All is in struggle... each one for himself" and so 

 on), that a recognition of this is only the first step in Darwinism. 



Profs. E. Perrier and H. F. Osborn have called attention to a 

 remarkable anticipation of the selection-idea which is to be found in 

 the speculations of Etienne Geofiroy St Hilaire (1825 — 1828) on 

 the evolution of modern Crocodilians from the ancient Teleosaurs. 

 Changing environment induced changes in the respiratory system and 

 far-reaching consequences followed. The atmosphere, acting upon 

 the pulmonary cells, brings about " modifications which are favourable 

 or destructive ('funestes') ; these are inherited, and they influence 

 all the rest of the organisation of the animal because if these modifi- 

 cations lead to injurious effects, the animals which exhibit them perish 

 and are replaced by others of a somewhat different form, a form 

 changed so as to be adapted to (a la convenance) the new environment." 



Prof. E. B. Poulton 2 has shown that the anthropologist James 

 Cowles Prichard (1786 — 1848) must be included, even in spite of 

 himself, among the precursors of Darwin. In some passages of the 

 second edition of his Researches into the Physical History of 

 Mankind (1826), he certainly talks evolution and anticipates Prof. 

 Weismann in denying the transmission of acquired characters. He 

 is, however, sadly self-contradictory and his evolutionism weakens in 

 subsequent editions — the only ones that Darwin saw. Prof. Poulton 



1 Life and Letters, n. p. 301. 



2 Science Progress, New Series, Vol. i. 1897. "A Remarkable Anticipation of Modern 

 Views on Evolution." See also Chap. vi. in Essays on Evolution, Oxford, 1908. 



