100 BIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 



made great progress. In fact, since the open- 

 ing of the twentieth century a more substan- 

 tial advance has been made in the solution of 

 evolutionary questions than in the whole pe- 

 riod between 1859, the year in which the 

 " Origin of Species " was published, and 1900. 



But the Darwinian period of evolutionary 

 activity was not the first. It was preceded by 

 a series of preliminary skirmishes fought out 

 mostly upon French soil. In 1809, Lamarck, 

 then about sixty-five years old, published his 

 "Philosophic Zoologique" in which was con- 

 tained the first well-ordered attempt at a 

 general theory of organic evolution. But this 

 fell on unsympathetic ears. It was, moreover, 

 opposed by Cuvier, whose scientific authority 

 was such that the whole movement for the 

 time being was swept aside, and Lamarck, in 

 a measure unrecognized and after an old age 

 of blindness, died in 1829. 



But among the French contemporaries of 

 Lamarck, to quote freely from Delage, was 

 Etienne Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire. He it was who 

 in 1830 took his stand against Cuvier in the 

 Academy of Sciences in a sensational debate 

 which lasted almost six months, a duel, so to 

 speak, between the theory of transmutation 



