224 NATURAL HISTORY. 



to return to the pre-Cuvierian period, and to glance at 

 the life and scientific opinions of Erasmus Darwin, the 

 grandfather of Charles Darwin, who may be regarded 

 as the first expositor, in any systematic form, of the 

 doctrine of the evolution of plants and animals from 

 pre-existent species. 



Erasmus Darwin was born on the i2th of December 

 1731, at Elton Hall, near Newark, Nottinghamshire. He 

 was educated as a medical man, and had a most successful 

 professional career, first in Nottingham, then in Lichfield, 

 and finally in Derby. He married twice; and his son, 

 Robert Waring Darwin, the father of Charles Darwin, was 

 the offspring of his first marriage. He died in 1802.* 

 To quote Mr Grant Allen : f ' A powerful, robust, athletic 

 man, in florid health and of temperate habits, yet with the 

 full-blooded tendency of the eighteenth century vividly 

 displayed in his ample face and broad features, Erasmus 

 Darwin bubbled over with irrepressible vivacity, the 

 outward and visible sign of that overflowing energy which 

 forms everywhere one of the most marked determining 

 conditions of high genius. Strong in body and strong in 

 mind, a teetotaler before teetotalism, an abolitionist before 

 the anti-slavery movement, he had a great contempt for 

 weaknesses and prejudices of every sort, and he rose far 

 superior to the age in which he lived in breadth of view 

 and freedom from preconceptions.' 



From very early years Erasmus Darwin had shown a 



* An account of Erasmus Darwin is to be found in Dr Krause's ' Erasmus 

 Darwin und seine Stellung in der Geschichte der Descendenz-theorie,' 1880. 

 Further details are given in the same author's ' Charles Darwin und sein Verhaltniss 

 zu Deutschland,' 1885. 



t Grant Allen, 'Life of Charles Darwin,' 1885. 



