Darwin and Descent 201 
Again :— 
“A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be 
opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation 
of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct 
action of external conditions, and so forth ” (p. 486). 
Buffon and Lamarck had trodden this field to some 
purpose, but not a hint to this effect is vouchsafed to us. 
Again ;— 
““ When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the 
lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before 
the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they 
seem to me to become ennobled. . . . We can so far take 
a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be 
the common and widely spread species, belonging to the 
larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail 
and procreate new and dominant species.” 
There is no alteration in this except that “ Silurian” 
has become ‘‘ Cambrian.” 
The idyllic paragraph with which Mr. Darwin concludes 
his book contains no more special claim to the theory of 
descent en bloc than many another which I have allowed to 
pass unnoticed ; it has been, moreover, dealt with in an 
earlier chapter (Chapter XII.) 
