242 DARWIN. 



effects of use and disuse, etc. I have also, for many years, 

 speculated on the different forms of reproduction. Hence it 

 comes to be a passion with me to try to connect all such facts 

 by some sort of hypothesis." 



Here, again, Darwin reached independently an 

 hypothesis which had been already formulated by 

 Buffon, Maupertuis, and foreshadowed by Democri- 

 tus and Hippocrates. Concerning Buffon's unex- 

 pected anticipation, he wrote to Huxley, to whom 

 he had submitted his manuscript : — 



^' I have read Buffon : whole pages are laughably like mine. 

 It is surprising how candid it makes one to see one's views in 

 another man's words. . . . Nevertheless, there is a fundamental 

 distinction between Buffon's views and mine. He does not sup- 

 pose that each cell or atom of tissue throws off a little bud. ..." 



Among Darwin's last words upon the factors of 

 Evolution are those in the sixth edition of the 

 Origin of Species (1880, p. 424). In the modi- 

 fication of species he refers as causes, successively 

 to his own, to Lamarck's, and to Buffon's factor in 

 the followino^ clear lansruaQ^e: "This has been 

 effected chiefly through the natural selection of 

 numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations; 

 aided in an important manner by the inherited 

 effects of the use and disuse of parts ; and in an un- 

 important manner — that is, in relation to adaptive 

 structures, whether past or present — by the direct 

 action of external conditions, and by variations 

 which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spon- 

 taneously." Later, in the Descent of Man (1881, 



