xiv HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was 

 Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at dif- 

 ferent periods, and as he does not enter on the causes 

 or means of the transformation of species, I need not 

 here enter on details. 



Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the 

 subject excited much attention. This Justly-celebrated 

 naturalist first published his views in 1801; he much 

 enlarged them in 1809 in his ' Philosophie Zoologique/ 

 and subsequently, in 1815, in the Introduction to his 

 'Hist. Nat. des Animaux sans Vertebres.' In these 

 works he upholds the doctrine that all species, including 

 man, are descended from other species. He first did 

 the eminent seryjce of arousing attention to the proba- 

 bility of all change in the organic, as well as in the 

 inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of 

 miraculous interposition. Laim»rck seems to have been 

 chiefly led to his conclusion on the gradual change of 

 species, by the difficulty of distinguishing species and 

 varieties, by the almost perfect gracfetion of forms in 

 certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic produc- 

 tions. With respect to the means of modification, he 

 attributed something to ^he direct action of the physical 

 conditions of life,, something to the crossing of already 

 existiiig forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to 

 the effects of habit. To this latter agency he seems to 

 attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature; — such 

 as the long nec}{ of the giraffe for browsing on the 



by an internal spontaneity ; and whatsoever tilings were not tlius 

 constituted, perished, and still perish." We here see the principle 

 of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully 

 comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the 

 formation of the teeth. 



