NEOLAMARCKISM 4 1 3 



quence of external stimuli is itself a matter which 

 deserves to be studied, and which we have no right 

 to reject without investigation, without observa- 

 tions, or to treat as a ridiculous dream ; Lamarck 

 would doubtless have made it more readily accepted, 

 if he had not thought it well to pass over the inter- 

 mediate steps by means of wants. It is incontestable 

 that by lack of exercise organs atrophy and disappear." 

 Finally, says Perrier: " Without doubt the real 

 mechanism of the improvement {perfectionnemetit) 

 of organisms has escaped him [Lamarck], but neither 

 has Darwin explained it. The law of natural selec- 

 tion is not the indication of a process of transforma- 

 tion of animals; it is the expression of the total 

 results. It states these results without showing us 

 how they have been brought about. We indeed 

 see that it tends to the preservation of the most per- 

 fect organisms; but Darwin does not show us how 

 the organisms themselves originated. This is a void 

 which we have only during these later years tried to 

 fill" (p. 90). 



Dr. J. A. Jeffries, author of an essay " On the 

 Epidermal System of Birds," in a later paper* thus 

 frankly expresses his views as to the relations of 

 natural selection to the Lamarckian factors. Re- 

 ferring to Darwin's case of the leg bones of domestic 

 ducks compared with those of wild ducks, and the 

 atrophy of disused organs, he adds: 



" In this case, as with most of Lamarck's laws, 

 Darwin has taken them to himself wherever natural 

 selection, sexual selection, and the like have fallen 

 to the ground. 



" Darwin's natural selection does not depend, as 



* " Lamarckism and Darwinism." Proceedings Boston Society- 

 Natural History, xxv., l8go, pp. 42-49. 



