FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE ^55 



enlarged upon Buffon's view of environment, 

 while Lamarck did not. The greatest gap in his 

 reasoning has become obvious since his time, 

 namely, the assumption that acquired adapta- 

 tions are immediately inherited; this he took for 

 granted and never endeavored to demonstrate. 



None the less we must close by placing La- 

 marck in the first rank of the predecessors of 

 Darwin. He was the first naturalist to become 

 profoundly convinced of the great law of grada- 

 tion and to place it in the form of a system; he 

 suffered social and scientific ostracism for this 

 conviction, but maintained and repeated his argu- 

 ments to his death-bed. There is a pathetic strain 

 in the avertissement to his Animauoo sans Ver- 

 tebres: 



Avant d'atteindre le terme de mon existence, j'ai 

 pense que, dans un nouvel ouvrage, susceptible d'etre 

 considere comme une seconde edition de mon Systeme 

 des aniviaux sans vertebres, je devais exposer les 

 principaux faits que j'ai recueillis pour mes lemons 

 . . . ainsi que mes observations et mes reflexions sur 

 la source de ces faits. 



Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844) 



Geoffroy St. Hilaire, another of the distin- 

 guished French naturalists of the early part of 

 the nineteenth century, was long a colleague of 



