412 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



ance from disuse, in regard to the appearance of 

 new organs he made hypotheses so venturesome 

 that they led to the momentary forgetfulness of his 

 other forceful conceptions."* 



The popular idea of Lamarckism, and which from 

 the first has been prejudicial to his views, is that an 

 animal may acquire an organ by simply wishing 'for 

 or desiring it, or, as his French critics put it, " Un 

 animal finit toujours par possdder un organe quand il 

 le veut." " Such," says Perrier,t " is not the idea 

 of Lamarck, who simply attributes the transforma- 

 tions of species to the stimulating action of external 

 conditions, construing it under the expression of 

 wants {besoins), and explaining by that word what 

 we now call adaptations. Thus the long neck of the 

 giraffe results from the fact that the animal inhabits 

 a country where the foliage is situated at the tops of 

 high trees; the long legs of the wading birds have 

 originated from the fact that these birds are obliged 

 to seek their food in the water without wetting 

 themselves," etc. (See p. 350.) 



" Many cases," says Perrier, " may be added to- 

 day to those which Lamarck has cited to support 

 his first law [pp. 303, 346] ; the only point which is open 

 to discussion is the extent of the changes which an 

 organ may undergo, through the use it is put to by 

 the animal. It is a simple question of measurement. 

 The possibility of the creation of an organ in conse- 



* Revue Encyclopedique, 1897, p. 325. Yet we have an example of 

 the appearance of a new organ in the case of the duckbill, in which 

 the horny plates take the place of the teeth which Poulton has dis- 

 covered in the embryo. Other cases are the adductor muscles of 

 shelled Crustacea. (See p. 418.) 



■j- La Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin, Paris, 1884, p. 76; 



