DARWIN S09 



ences were preceded by resemMances ; that, in 

 fact, comparative anatomy is an arrested em- 

 bryology, and embryology a transitory compara- 

 tive anatomy. 



The Followers of Buffon 



Among those who took up, more especially, the 

 ideas of Buffon and Linnaeus, was the Reverend 

 W. Herbert, in his work on the Amaryllidacece, 

 1837, in which he declares that "horticultural ex- 

 periments have established, beyond the possibility 

 of refutation, that botanical species are only a 

 higher and more permanent class of varieties"; 

 that single species of each genus were created in 

 an originally plastic condition, and that these 

 produced, by intercrossing and by variation, all 

 our existing species. He thus takes a point mid- 

 way between Linnaeus and Buffon. 



Von Buck (1773-1853) 



Another Buffonian was Christian Leopold von 

 Buch, a well-known naturalist and geologist. We 

 find that in 1825 he is struck, like Humboldt, 

 with the problem raised by the geographical dis- 

 tribution of plants; unlike the great traveler, he 

 does not hesitate, but proceeds to solve it. He 

 says :^ 



lEssay translated in 1836 as Physical Description of the Canary 

 Islands. See Haeckel: The History of Creation, 1892, vol. I, pp. 

 109-10. 



