LAMARCK'S THEORY OF DESCENT 351 



to isolation in a new area separating a large number 

 of individuals from their accustomed habitat, they 

 are driven by necessity {besoiri) or new needs to adopt 

 a new or different mode of life — new habits. These 

 efforts, whatever they may be — such as attempts to 

 fly, swim, wade, climb, burrow, etc., continued for a 

 long time " in all the individuals of its species," or 

 the great number forced by competition to migrate 

 and become segregated from the others of the original 

 species — finally, owing to the changed surroundings, 

 affect the mass of individuals thus isolated, and their 

 organs thus exercised in a special direction undergo a 

 slow modification. // 



Even so careful a writer as Dr. Alfred R. Wallace 

 does not quite fairly, or with exactness, state what 

 Lamarck says, when in his classical essay of 1858 he 

 represents Lamarck as stating that the giraffe ac- 

 quired its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage 

 of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching 

 its neck for the purpose. On the contrary, he does 

 not use the word " desiring " at all. What Lamarck 

 does say is that — 



" The giraffe lives in dry, desert places, without 

 herbage, so that it is obliged to browse on the leaves 

 of trees, and is continually forced to reach up to them. 

 It results from this habit, continued for a long time in 

 all the individuals of its species, that its fore limbs 

 have become so elongated that the giraffe, without 

 raising itself erect on its hind legs, raises its head and 

 reaches six meters high (almost twenty feet)." * 



* This is taken from my article, " Lamarck and Neo-Iamarckian- 

 ism," in the Open Court, Chicago, February, iSyy. Compare also 

 " Darwin Wrong," etc., by R. F. Licorish, M.D., Barbadoes, 1898, 

 reprinted in Natural Science, April, i8gg. 



