LAMARCK'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



271 



-^H. 



shall then enter into sufficient details which I am 

 here obliged to omit.* 



" However, it is still objected that all we see stated 

 regarding the state of living bodies are unalterable 

 conditions in the preservation of their form, and it is 

 thought that all the animals whom history has trans- 

 mitted to us for two or three thousand years have 

 always remained the same, and have lost nothing nor 

 acquired anything in the perfecting of their organs 

 and in the form of their parts. 



" While this apparent stability has for a long time 

 been accepted as true, it has just been attempted to 

 establish special proofs in a report on the collections 

 of natural history brought from Egypt by the citizen 

 GeofTroy." 



Quotes three paragraphs in which the reporters 

 (Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire) .say that the mum- 

 mied animals of Thebes and Memphis are perfectly 

 similar to those of to-day. Then he goes on to say : 



" I have seen them, these animals, and I believe in 

 the conformity of their resemblance with the individ- 

 uals of the same species which live to-day. Thus 

 the animals which the Egyptians worshipped and 

 embalmed two or three thousand years ago are still 

 in every respect similar to those which actually live 

 in that country. 



" But it would be assuredly very singular that this 



/ should be otherwise ; for the position of Egypt and 



( its climate are still or very nearly the same as at 



1, former times. Therefore the animals which live there 



have not been compelled to change their habits. 



" There is, then, nothing in the observation which 

 has just been reported which should be contrary to 



* " See at the end of this discourse the sketch of a Philosophic zoo- 

 logique relative to this subject." [This sketch was not added — only 

 the title at the end of the book.] 



