382 
MISCELLANEA. 
this description, and that he was known as “ Old Tom, 5 * and that he 
also passed as the Rev. Mr. Clerk. 
The jury found the prisoner guilty, but recommended him to mercy 
on account of his age. 
He was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment and hard labour. 
ARMY APPOINTMENTS. 
VETERINARY DEPARTMENT. 
A. G. Ross, gent., to be Acting Veterinary Surgeon. 
Gazette , May 17 th. 
MISCELLANEA. 
LAMARCK. 
The famous naturalist Lamarck possessed a greater 
acquaintance with the lower forms of life than any man of his 
day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good botanist to boot. 
Two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of 
thought of this remarkable man—the one, that finer or 
stronger links of affinity connect all living beings with one 
another, and that thus the highest creature grades by multi¬ 
tudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that an organ may 
be developed in particular directions by exerting itself in parti¬ 
cular ways, and that modifications once induced may be trans¬ 
mitted and become hereditary. Putting these facts together, 
Lamarck endeavoured to account for the first by the ope¬ 
ration of the second. Place an animal in new circum¬ 
stances, says he, and its needs will be altered ; the new needs 
will create new desires, and the attempt to gratify such de¬ 
sires will result in an appropriate modification of the organs 
exerted. Make a man a blacksmith, and his brachial muscles 
will develop in accordance with the demands made upon 
them ; and in like manner, says Lamarck, i( the efforts of some 
short-necked bird to catch fish without wetting himself have, 
with time and perseverance, given rise to all our herons and 
long-necked waders. v The Lamarckian hypothesis has long 
since been justly condemned, and it is the established prac¬ 
tice for every tyro to raise his heel against the carcass of the 
dead lion. But it is rarely either wise or instructive to treat 
even the errors of a really great man with mere ridicule, and 
in the present case the logical form of the doctrine stands on 
a very different footing from its substance. 
