Chapter XVII 
Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck 
Be anxious to give the reader a sample of the 
arguments against the theory of natural selection 
from among variations that are mainly either directly or 
indirectly functional in their inception, or more briefly 
against the Erasmus-Darwinian and Lamarckian systems, 
I can find nothing more to the point, or more recent, than 
Professor Ray Lankester’s letter to the Atheneum of 
March 29, 1884, to the latter part of which, however, I 
need alone call attention. Professor Ray Lankester says :— 
“ And then we are introduced to the discredited specula- 
tions of Lamarck, which have found a worthy advocate in 
Mr. Butler, as really solid contributions to the discovery of 
the vere cause of variation! A much more important 
attempt to do something for Lamarck’s hypothesis, of the 
transmission to offspring of structural peculiarities acquired 
by the parents, was recently made by an able and experi- 
enced naturalist, Professor Semper of Wurzburg. His book 
on ‘ Animal Life,’ &c., is published in the ‘ International 
Scientific Series.’ Professor Semper adduces an immense 
number and variety of cases of structural change in animals 
and plants brought about in the individual by adaptation 
(during its individual life-history) to new conditions. 
Some of these are very marked changes, such as the loss of 
its horny coat in the gizzard of a pigeon fed on meat ; but in 
no single instance could Professor Semper show—although 
it was his object and desire to do so if possible—that such 
change was transmitted from parent to offspring, 
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