How I wrote '' Evolution," etc. 27 



time, I admit, in a spirit of scepticism. I read his " brief 

 but imperfect " sketch of the progress of opinion on the 

 origin of species, and turned to each one of the writers he 

 had mentioned. First, I read all the parts of the " Zoo- 

 nomia " that were not purely medical, and was astonished 

 to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on 

 Erasmus Darwin, " he ivas the first i&ho proposed and per- 

 sistently carried out a well-rounded theory with regard to the 

 development of the living world " ^ (italics in original). 



This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at 

 finding Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent 

 man that he could " hardly be said to have made any 

 real advance upon his predecessors." Still more was I 

 surprised at remembering that, in the first edition of 

 the " Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never 

 been so much as named ; while in the " brief but im- 

 perfect " sketch he was dismissed with a line of half- 

 contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled tribute 

 of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific 

 prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the ut- 

 most he was entitled to. " It is curious," says Mr. Darwin 

 innocently, in the middle of a note in the smallest possible 

 type, " how largely my grandfather. Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 

 anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion 

 of Lamarck in his ' Zoonomia ' (vol. i. pp. 500-510), 

 published in 1794 " ; this was all he had to say about the 

 founder of " Darwinism," until I myself unearthed Dr. 

 Erasmus Darwin, and put his work fairly before the present 

 generation in " Evolution, Old and New." Six months after 

 I had done this, I had the satisfaction of seeing that Mr. 

 Darwin had woke up to the propriety of doing much the 

 same thing, and that he had published an interesting and 

 charmingly written memoir of his grandfather, of which 

 more anon. 



Not that Dr. Darwin was the first to catch sight of a 

 complete theory of evolution. Buffon was the first to point 



^ " Erasmus Darwin," by Ernest Krause, p. 211, London, 1879. 



