EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 189 



of the evolution theory to the interpretation of 

 actual facts of comparative anatomy, zoology, 

 and palaeontology . He did not, like Erasmus 

 Darwin and Lamarck, erect an evolution system 

 of life. It is true also that his conception of the 

 principle of Evolution changed during three pe- 

 riods of his life; it is difficult to gather from his 

 conflicting statements exactly what his opinions 

 were, yet we may say without exaggeration that 

 he laid the basis of modern Evolution in syste- 

 matic zoology and botany. 



We claim this for Butf on, because he was the 

 first to point out, on a broad scale, the mutabil- 

 ity of species in relation to changes of environ- 

 ment. Moreover, he advanced beyond the Greek 

 evolutionists and natural philosophers of the 

 eighteenth century in first working out a definite 

 theory of the causes of the mutability of species. 

 His writings, which cover the widest range of 

 subjects, from cosmogony down to some of the 

 minutiag of zoology, undoubtedly exercised a 

 great influence in England and in Europe. He 

 sowed the seed of suggestion in some passages, 

 which, it is true, were mostly speculative, and 

 these seeds germinated in the minds of the later 

 German natural philosophers and among Buf- 

 fon's naturalist contemporaries, while ripening 

 and bearing fruit in his successor, Lamarck, and 

 others, both in France and England. Bufton's 



