262- The American Geologist. October. 1902. 
EDITORIAL COMMENT. 
WAS THK DEVELOPMENT THEORY INELUENCED BY THE VES- 
TIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION?" 
In weighing the claims of Charles Robert Darwin to the 
admiration of the world for his share in the construction 
of a rational theory to account for the common origin of the 
widely different forms of organic life, credit has been given 
to Democritus, Aristotle, Harvey, Wolff, A^anBar, Remak^ 
Bufforn, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Malthus, and even 
Bonet and Haller, for thoughts which served the great 
naturalist as building stones, or connective mortar. Now it is 
evident that the successful establishment of this great concep- 
tion of the "Origin of Species" demanded preliminarily the 
winning of two separate victories of equal importance over 
deep rooted. prejudices. These were compelling the assent of 
the reason of mankind first to the admission of the over- 
whelming evidence of the close relation of species in time and 
place; and second to the equally strong proof of the constant 
variations in progeny of the same parents, and of the 
ability of the possessors o^f special features tO' transmit these 
hereditarily when useful to the existence of their offspring. 
In default of forcing a conviction of the first proposition the 
second would be barren of interest. For this reason it is sur- 
prising that tbe influence of the "Vestiges of the Natural 
History of Creation," which appeared anonymously in 1845, 
should be so rarely and slightingly' alluded to (if not entirely 
ignored ) by masters like Huxley and Haeckel who have 
moulded modern thought on this problem. 
It is a fact thiat this excited immense interest at the time 
of its publication, running through five editions in little over 
a year, and drew down upon the head of its author much of 
the pompous and stilted malediction of the ponderous re- 
viewers which would otherwise have been added to that 
which Darwin had to bear fifteen years later, had not the 
fatuitv of many of the suppositious objections to the 
"\ estiges" by one reviewer been refuted by the others. As a 
lightning rod which discharged an enormous amount of de- 
structive rhetorical electricity it cleared the atmosphere 
somewhat for the appearance of the greater work, but its ser- 
