EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 201 



it may be recalled that the science of palaeontol- 

 ogy was then unborn and that the succession of 

 species in the rocks was undreamed of. He ex- 

 pressly says that the 'filiation' and genealogy of 

 species furnish a problem beyond our reach: 



Nous ne pourrions nous prononcer plus affirma- 

 tivement si les limites qui separent les especes, ou la 

 chairie qui les unit, nous etaient mieux connues ; mais 

 qui peut avoir suivi la grande filiation de toutes les 

 genealogies dans la nature? II faut etre ne avec elle 

 et avoir, pour ainsi dire, des observations contempo- 

 raines. 



Fourth, Buffon's ideas regarding the physical 

 basis of heredity are very similar to those of 

 Democritus, and certainly contain the basis of 

 the conception of the pangenesis theory of Dar- 

 win, for he supposes that the elements of the 

 germ-cells were gathered from all parts of the 

 body. He does not expressly speak of the trans- 

 mission of acquired characters as a logical part 

 of his theory of heredity, but such transmission 

 was undoubtedly in his mind, although not 

 clearly formulated as by Lamarck. 



Buff on thus left untouched many problems for 

 his successors, even prior to the period of Charles 

 Darwin, namely, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, 

 and Goethe. 



