Charles Darwin. 



was forced upon the evolutionist. Perhaps the clergy 

 gave him close and suggestive attention, and he was 

 offered the choice between the Bastile, the Sorbonne, 

 and apology to offended orthodoxy. Be this as it 

 may, Buffon was one of the early delineators of the 

 modern theory of evolution, and despite his peculiar 

 attitude history accords him this recognition. 



Following Buffon came Wolff and his works in 

 1759-1764, in which the idea was still further elab- 

 orated. He emphasised the fact that the parts of 

 plants and animals underwent transmutations of 

 structure, so that from seeds, on the one hand, and 

 eggs on the other, came the many complex and di- 

 verse organisms. In 1790 Goethe, in his work, " The 

 Metamorphosis of Plants," worked out indepen- 

 dently the same result, showing another instance as 

 singular as that of Darwin and Wallace, previously 

 alluded to in these pages. In 1795 Geoffrey St. 

 Hilaire, a French naturalist, announced his belief 

 that all animals were the modified forms of previous 

 existing types. Then came Oken (1803), Pander 

 (1817), and Von Baer (1819), all adding many facts 

 of value and interest bearing upon the subject. In 

 1838 Schleiden and Schwann proved that the cell- 

 form was alike in animals and plants ; and in 1850-61 

 Von Mohl and Max Schultze showed that the pro- 

 toplasm of animals was similar to that of plants. 



To go back again, we find that in 1774 Lord 

 Monboddo announced that the descent of man from 

 an ape was a possibility. In 1795 Dr. Erasmus Dar- 

 win, grandfather of our hero, published his " Zoo- 

 nomia," which contained the germ of the theory 



