HAECKEL: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND COMPANIONS 79 © 
Challenger’s collection was submitted to Haeckel, the 
radiolaria included 810 species. When his report was 
finished, the number was 4,318 species, arranged in 739 
genera. 
It was in that monograph Haeckel first expressed his 
admiration for Darwin’s theory of the origin of species. 
The ground of that satisfaction was not because the theory 
itself was new, but for the reason that the mode by which 
in process of time new species originate was described with 
a precision and wealth of illustration before altogether un- 
known. The belief that plants and animals have been 
developed from pristine germs, so far from being new, 
found expression in some of the oldest cosmogonies. In 
point of age it ranks with the earliest speculations of the 
race. Among other representative men who held that 
belief may be named Aristotle, Saint Augustine, and 
Thomas Aquinas. These were great men who influenced 
the thought of their time ages ago. Of a later date were 
Buffon, Lamark, Geoffroy Saint Hiliare and Erasmus 
Darwin ; while contemporaneous with Charles Darwin him- 
self were Wells, Matthews, Chambers and Herbert Spencer, 
whose essay in the ‘‘Ieader’’ in 1852 contrasted the 
theories of direct creation and evolution of species, in 
favcur of the latter. All these eminent men, with others 
who might be named, each after his own ideas, held to a 
theory of the evolution of life in the world. 
To but few men were these facts so well known as to 
Haeckel. Yet Darwin had presented his theory with such 
logical completeness, lucidity and fullness of illustration 
from all departments of organic life, that Haeckel wrote : 
‘*Y cannot refrain from expressing the great admiration 
Darwin’s able theory of the origin of species has inspired in 
we. This is the first great attempt to construct a scientific 
physiological theory of the development of organic life, and 
to prove that the physiological, chemical and physical forces 
that te day rule in nature, must also have been in the 
world of yesterday.” 
