CH. xxxix GE OFFR Y ST.- HI LA IRE. 431 



its form; as for instance, a giraffe constantly wishing to eat the 

 boughs off high trees might stretch his neck, and so by de- 

 grees each generation might have longer necks than the last 

 one. This reason was so weak and ridiculous that it prevented 

 naturalists from paying much attention to Lamarck's theory. 



Geoffrey St.-Hilaire points out that the Parts or 

 Organs are the same in all Animals, only Modified to 

 suit their Wants. Geoffrey St.-Hilaire was, however, 

 inclined to think that there was some truth in Lamarck's 

 theory, although Cuvier was strongly against it. Cuvier, you 

 remember, had given his time chiefly to the restoration of 

 the skeletons of the higher animals, and he was as much 

 struck with the immense difference between them as 

 Lamarck had been with the likeness of the lower animals. 

 Cuvier thought that each animal was at first created sepa- 

 rately, and all its parts were arranged expressly to meet its 

 wants. He looked upon the creation of each kind of 

 animal as something similar to the making of a machine, 

 into which we put a wheel here and a valve there expressly 

 to make it do the work required. 



Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, on the contrary, insisted that we 

 never find any part of an animal which we can say was made 

 expressly for it. Whenever we examine it closely enough 

 we find it is exactly the same as exists in other beings, only 

 its growth is altered so as to make it useful to that particular 

 animal. The pouch of the Kangaroo, he said, is only a fold 

 of the skin which is looser than in other animals ; the trunk 

 of the elephant is a nose which has become extremely long ; 

 the hand of a man, the leg of a horse, and the wing oi a 

 bat, are the same organ and have the same bones, although 

 they serve such different purposes. ' Nature,' he said, ' has 

 formed all living beings on one plan, essentially the same in 

 principle, but varied in a thousand ways in all the minoi 



