LAMARCK'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



247 



it susceptible, has traced twenty-six zoological divi- 

 sions on the dry parts of the globe, and eighteen 

 over the ocean ; but there are many other influences 

 than those which depend on localities and tempera- 

 tures. 



" Everything tends, then, to prove my assertion — 

 namely, that it is not the form either of the body or 

 of its parts which has given rise to habits and to the 

 mode of life of animals, but, on the contrary, it is the 

 habits, the mode of Hfe, and all the other influential 

 circumstances which have with time produced the 

 form of the bodies and organs of animals. With new 

 forms new faculties have been acquired, and gradually 

 nature has arrived at the state where we actually 

 see it. 



" Finally as it is only at that extremity of the 

 animal kingdom where occur the most simply organ- 

 ized animals that we meet those which may be re- 

 garded as the true germs of animality, and it is the 

 same at the same end of the vegetable series ; is it not 

 at this end of the scale, both animal arid vegetable, 

 that nature has commenced and recommenced with- 

 out ceasing the first germ of her living production ? 

 Who is there, in a word, who does not see that the 

 process of perfection of those of these first germs 

 which circumstances have favored will gradually and 

 after the lapse of time give rise to all the degrees of 

 perfection and of the composition of the organization, 

 from which will result this multiplicity and this 

 diversity of living beings of all orders with which the 

 exterior surface of our globe is almost everywhere 

 filled or covered ? 



" Indeed, if the manner {usage) of life tends to de- 

 velop the organization, and even to form and multiply 

 the organs, as the state of an animal which has just 

 been born provps it, compared to that where it finds 

 itself when it has reached the term where its organs 



