Soo TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a matter of course, though usually only to reject it as an exploded 

 hypothesis. Thus the " Elements of Geology," of Alonzo Gray and C. 

 B. Adams, 1852, enumerates three theories which have been advanced 

 respecting the origin of animal species: (1) Successive special crea- 

 tions; (2) "transmutation, which supposes that beings of the most 

 simple organization having somehow come into existence, the more 

 complex and the higher orders of animals have originated in them by 

 a gradual increase in the complexity of their structures"; 1 (3) 

 generatio cequivoca of individuals and species. The first is adopted, 

 but the second is discussed at greatest length; on it the authors re- 

 mark that " those who have adopted the theory of transmutation have 

 generally detached it from Lamarck's theory of appetency, and not 

 attempted to explain how the process of transmutation goes on." The 

 argument for evolution is similarly discussed and " refuted " in " Geo- 

 logical Science," a popular text-book by D. T. Ansted, F.K.S., 1854. 

 To this refutation, indeed, the greatest of English geologists had de- 

 voted three chapters of his " Principles of Geology " 2 before 1835. 



But though such facts as these are, as I have said, now fairly 

 familiar, the notion still widely prevails, even among biologists, that no 

 serious proof of evolution either existed or had been published before 

 the appearance of the " Origin of Species " — or at all events, before 

 the late 1850's. 3 Professor Joseph Le Conte„indeed, in his " Evolution 

 and Its Eelation to Religious Thought," 4 made it a reproach against 

 both Lamarck and Chambers that they had unscientifically embraced 

 the hypothesis before the evidence for it was ripe; and considered it 

 fortunate for science that their notions died still-born, under the 

 weight of the great authority of Cuvier and Agassiz. " I know," wrote 

 Le Conte, " that many think with Haeckel that biology was kept back 

 half a century by the baleful influence of Agassiz and Cuvier; but I 

 can not think so. The hypothesis was contrary to the facts of science, 

 as then known and understood. It was conceived in the spirit of base- 

 less speculation, rather than of cautious induction; of skilful elabora- 



1 1 quote from the reprint of 1854, p. 87. 



2 The writer's copy of Lyell's " Principles " is the first American from the 

 fifth London edition, 1837. 



3 This opinion has, for example, been expressed by Poulton in his " Charles 

 Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection." " The paramount importance of 

 Darwin's contributions to the evidences of organic evolution are [sic] often 

 forgotten in the brilliant theory which he believed to supply the motive cause 

 of descent with modification. Organic evolution had been held to be true by 

 certain thinkers during many centuries ; but not only were its adherents entirely 

 without a sufficient motive cause, but their evidences of the process itself were 

 erroneous or extremely scanty. It was Darwin who first brought together a 

 great body of scientific evidence which placed the process of evolution beyond 

 dispute, whatever the causes of evolution may have been" (p. 100). 



* Second edition, 1905, pp. 33-35. 



