REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.' 393 



Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to the 

 general doctrine of Evolutiorl,"* and that Erasmus 

 Darwin "can hardly be said to have made any real 

 advance on his predecessors/'f 



Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus 

 Darwin, and still less, apparently, about Buffon.J Pro- 

 fessor Tyndall,§ in 1878, spoke of Evolution as "Dar- 

 win's theory" ; and I have just read Mr. Grant Allen 

 as paying that Evolutionism " is an almost exclusively 

 English impulse." 1 1 



Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I 

 have observed several of the so-called men of science — 

 among them Professor Huxley and Mr. Romanes — airing 

 Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till 

 within the last three years. I maintain that " men of 

 science" were, and still are, very ignorant concerning the 

 history of Evolution ; but, whether they were or were 

 not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,' for 

 them ; I wrote for the general public, who have been 

 kind enough to testify their appreciation of it in a 

 sufficiently practical manner. 



The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met ' Evolu- 

 tion, Old and New,' has been so fully dealt with in my 

 book, ' Unconscious Memory ; ' in the 'Athenaeum,' Jan. 

 31, 1880; the 'St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880; and 

 ' Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, 

 more especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, 

 admitted that he has no defence to make. 



* P. 748 + Udd. X See pp. 71-73. 



^ • Nineteenth Century ' for November, pp. 360, 361, 

 II 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882, 



