THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY 



Creation, which appeared anonymously in England in 

 1844, and which passed through numerous editions, and 

 was the subject of no end of abusive and derisive com- 

 ment. The authorship of this book remained for forty 

 years a secret, but it is now conceded to have been the 

 work of Robert Chambers, the well-known English 

 author and publisher. The book itself is remarkable as 

 being an avowed and unequivocal exposition of a gener- 

 al doctrine of evolution, its view being as radical and 

 comprehensive as that of Lamarck himself. But it was 

 a resume of earlier efforts rather than a new departure, 

 to say nothing of its technical shortcomings, and, while 

 it aroused bitter animadversions, and cannot have been 

 without effect in creating an undercurrent of thought in 

 opposition to the main trend of opinion of the time, it 

 can hardly be said to have done more than that. In- 

 deed, some critics have denied it even this merit. After 

 its publication, as before, the conception of transmuta- 

 tion of species remained in the popular estimation, both 

 lay and scientific, an almost forgotten " heresy." 



It is true that here and there a scientist of greater or 

 less repute as Yon Buch, Meckel, and Yon Baer in 

 Germany, Bory Saint Yincent in France, Wells, Grant, 

 and Matthew in England, and Leidy in America had 

 expressed more or less tentative dissent from the doc- 

 trine of special creation and immutability of species, but 

 their unaggressive suggestions, usually put forward in 

 obscure publications, and incidentally, were utterly over- 

 looked and ignored. And so, despite the scientific ad- 

 vances along many lines at the middle of the century, 

 the idea of the transmutability of organic races had no 

 such prominence, either in scientific or unscientific cir- 

 cles, as it had acquired fifty years before. Special cre- 



801 



