294 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



Isidore St. Hilaire (1805-1861) 



Isidore St. Hilaire, son of Geoffroy, serves us 

 as a mirror of the further recession of opinion 

 from transmutation in France and the cumula- 

 tive influence of Cuvier. The tide of hostile influ- 

 ence in the absence of direct evidence was setting 

 too strongly against any form of the evolution 

 doctrine, and we find the son taking a still more 

 conservative position than that of his father, 

 whom, nevertheless, he loyally defended. 



He advanced a theory of 'the limited variabil- 

 ity of species' (rather than of the mutability) in 

 his classic work, Histoire Generale et Particuliere 

 des Anomalies de VOrgamsation, 1832-7, and in 

 his Histoire Naturelle Generale des Regnes Or- 

 ganiques. He was undoubtedly swayed by the 

 difficulty of finding positive evidence for trans- 

 formation, and further by the negative evidence 

 of the stability of species afforded by the rich 

 collections of mummied animals brought back 

 from Egypt. Thus in his theory he dwelt upon 

 the limited variability rather than the mutability 

 of species, believing in transmission only to the 

 point of forming a new race.^ 



iThis is fully set forth in his Histoire Naturelle, vol. II, 1859, 

 p. 431. The Introduction Historique (vol. I, pp. 1-123) to this 

 work is an extremely valuable review of the origin and progress 

 of natural history among the Hebrews, Chinese, Persians, Egyp- 

 tians, Greeks and Romans, and in modern time down to the nine- 



