162 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



the segmented vertebrae of the backbone. Rob- 

 inet conceived Evolution on a large scale, bor- 

 rowing a mistaken interpretation of Aristotle. 

 Oken stated somewhat more distinctly than had 

 been done previously the hypothesis of the cel- 

 lular origin of life. As Bonnet was the contem- 

 porary of Buffon, and Oken lived thirty years 

 later than Lamarck, the study of this specula- 

 tive group carries us well beyond the period in 

 which the sound foundations of Modern Evolu- 

 tion were laid by the natural philosophers and 

 great naturalists. 



Buret ( -1611), Kircher (1601-1680) 



Some of the early biological literature of the 

 seventeenth century, as pointed out by Ducasse 

 and Varigny, is quaint. Thus Claude Duret in 

 his Histoire Admirable des Plantes (1605) is a 

 direct transformationist. Among other remark- 

 able tales he describes and figures a tree, "not, it 

 is true, common in France, but frequently ob- 

 served in Scotland" ( a country which the Mayor 

 evidently considered so remote that his observa- 

 tion would probably not be gainsaid) ; from this 

 tree leaves are falling; upon one side they strike 

 the water and slowly transform into fishes, upon 

 the other they strike land and turn into birds. 

 Father Bonnami was another writer of similar 



