VIEWS OF GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE 



215 



differ from them according "to the degree of the 

 modifying power." * Again, he says, " The animals 

 Hving to-day have been derived by a series of unin- 

 terrupted generations from the extinct animals of the 

 antediluvian world." f He gave as an example the 

 crocodiles of the present day, which he believed to 

 have descended from the fossil forms. While he 

 admitted the possibility of one type passing into 

 another, separated by characters of more than generic 

 value, he always, according to his son Isidore, re- 

 jected the view which made all the living species 

 descend " d'une esphe antediluvienne primitive." \ 

 It will be seen that Geoffrey St. Hilaire's views were 

 chiefly based on palaeontological evidence. He was 

 throughout broad and philosophical, and his eloquent 

 demonstration in his Philosophie anatomiqiie of the 

 doctrine of homologies served to prepare the way for 

 modern morphology, and affords one of the founda- 

 tion stones on which rests the theory of descent. 

 Though temporarily vanquished in the debate with 

 Cuvier, who was a forceful debater and represented 

 the views then prevalent, a later generation acknowl- 

 edges that he was in the right, and remembers him 

 as one of the founders of evolution. 



* Recherches sur V Organisation des Gavials {Memoires du Museum 

 d' Histoire naturelle, xii., p. 97 (1825). 



f Sur I' Influence du Monde ambiant, p. 74. 



\ Dictionnaire de la Conversation, xxxi., p. 487, 1836 (quoted by I. 

 Geoffroy St. Hilaire); Histoire nat. gin. des Rhgnes organiques, ii., 

 2= partie ; also Rdsumi, p. 30 (1859). 



