NEOLAMARCKISM 389 



Mr. A. Agassiz remarks that the effect of the 

 nature of the bottom of the sea on sponges and rhizo- 

 pods "is an all-important factor in modifying the 

 organism." * 



While Hyatt's studies were chiefly on the am- 

 monites, molluscs, and existing sponges, Cope was 

 meanwhile at work on the batrachians. His Origin 

 of Genera appeared shortly after Hyatt's first paper, 

 but in the same year (1866). This was followed by 

 a series of remarkably suggestive essays based on. 

 his extensive palaeontological work, which are in part 

 reprinted in his Origin of the Fittest (1887); while in 

 his epoch-making book. The Primary Factors of Or- 

 ganic Evolution (1896), we have in a condensed shape 

 a clear exposition of some of the Lamarckian factors 

 in their modern Neolamarckian form. 



In the Introduction, p. 9, he remarks: 



" In these papers by Professor Hyatt and myself 

 is found the first attempt to show by concrete ex- 

 amples of natural taxonomy that the variations that 

 result in evolution are not multifarious or promiscu- 

 ous, but definite and direct, contrary to the method 

 which seeks no origin for variations other than nat- 

 ural selection. In other words, these publications 

 constitute the first essays in systematic evolution 

 that appeared. By the discovery of the paleontologic 

 succession of modifications of the articulations of 

 the vertebrate, and especially mammalian, skeleton, 

 I first furnished an actual demonstration of the real- 

 ity of the Lamarckian factor of use, or motion, as 

 friction, impact, and strain, as an efficient cause of 

 evolution." f 



* Three Cruises of the ''Blake" 1888, ii., p. 158. 



f The earliest paper in which he adopted the Lamarckian doctrines 



