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LAMARCK


[Illustration: Attempt at a reconstruction of the Profile of Lamarck
from an unpublished etching by Dr. Cachet]




                                LAMARCK

                        THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION

                          _HIS LIFE AND WORK_

                        WITH TRANSLATIONS OF HIS
                     WRITINGS ON ORGANIC EVOLUTION


                                   By
                    ALPHEUS S. PACKARD, M.D., LL.D.

 Professor of Zoölogy and Geology in Brown University; author of "Guide
    to the Study of Insects," "Text-book of Entomology," etc., etc.


             "La postérité vous honorera!"
                             --_Mlle. Cornelie de Lamarck_


                        LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
                    91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
                           LONDON AND BOMBAY
                                  1901




                          COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY
                        LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

                         _All rights reserved_

                      Press of J. J. Little & Co.
                         Astor Place, New York




PREFACE


Although it is now a century since Lamarck published the germs of his
theory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that the
scientific world and the general public have become familiar with the
name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.

The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian theory of organic
evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism; the prevalence of
these views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially in
France, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder of
organic evolution, has invested his name with a new interest, and led to
a desire to learn some of the details of his life and work, and of his
theory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent years, and finally
expounded it in 1809. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a more
extended sketch of Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work as a
philosophical biologist, than has yet appeared.

But the seeker after the details of his life is baffled by the general
ignorance about the man--his antecedents, his parentage, the date of his
birth, his early training and education, his work as a professor in the
Jardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place of his burial, and
his relations to his scientific contemporaries.

Except the _éloges_ of Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier, and the brief
notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, and Bourguin, there is no
special biography, however brief, except a _brochure_ of thirty-one
pages, reprinted from a few scattered articles by the distinguished
anthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in the fourth and last volume
of a little-known journal, _l'Homme_, entitled _Lamarck. Par un Groupe
de Transformistes, ses Disciples_, Paris, 1887. This exceedingly rare
pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mortillet, with the
assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. A. Mondière, who with others,
under the leadership of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a _Réunion
Lamarck_ and a _Dîner Lamarck_, to maintain and perpetuate the memory of
the great French transformist. Owing to their efforts, the exact date of
Lamarck's birth, the house in which he lived during his lifetime at
Paris, and all that we shall ever know of his place of burial have been
established. It is a lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a
grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with no headstone to
mark the site, on one side of a row of graves of others better cared
for, from which trench his bones, with those of others unknown and
neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the catacombs of Paris. Lamarck
left behind him no letters or manuscripts; nothing could be ascertained
regarding the dates of his marriages, the names of his wives or of all
his children. Of his descendants but one is known to be living, an
officer in the army. But his aims in life, his undying love of science,
his noble character and generous disposition are constantly revealed in
his writings.

The name of Lamarck has been familiar to me from my youth up. When a
boy, I used to arrange my collection of shells by the Lamarckian system,
which had replaced the old Linnean classification. For over thirty years
the Lamarckian factors of evolution have seemed to me to afford the
foundation on which natural selection rests, to be the primary and
efficient causes of organic change, and thus to account for the origin
of variations, which Darwin himself assumed as the starting point or
basis of his selection theory. It is not lessening the value of Darwin's
labors, to recognize the originality of Lamarck's views, the vigor with
which he asserted their truth, and the heroic manner in which, against
adverse and contemptuous criticism, to his dying day he clung to them.

During a residence in Paris in the spring and summer of 1899, I spent my
leisure hours in gathering material for this biography. I visited the
place of his birth--the little hamlet of Bazentin, near Amiens--and,
thanks to the kindness of the schoolmaster of that village, M. Duval,
was shown the house where Lamarck was born, the records in the old
parish register at the _mairie_ of the birth of the father of Lamarck
and of Lamarck himself. The Jesuit Seminary at Amiens was also visited,
in order to obtain traces of his student life there, though the search
was unsuccessful.

My thanks are due to Professor A. Giard of Paris for kind assistance in
the loan of rare books, for copies of his own essays, especially his
_Leçon d'Ouverture des Cours de l'Évolution des Êtres organisés_, 1888,
and in facilitating the work of collecting data. Introduced by him to
Professor Hamy, the learned anthropologist and archivist of the Muséum
d'Histoire Naturelle, I was given by him the freest access to the
archives in the Maison de Buffon, which, among other papers, contained
the MS. _Archives du Muséum_; _i.e._, the _Procès verbaux des Séances
tenues par les Officiers du Jardin des Plantes_, from 1790 to 1830,
bound in vellum, in thirty-four volumes. These were all looked through,
though found to contain but little of biographical interest relating to
Lamarck, beyond proving that he lived in that ancient edifice from 1793
until his death in 1829. Dr. Hamy's elaborate history of the last years
of the Royal Garden and of the foundation of the Muséum d'Histoire
Naturelle, in the volume commemorating the centennial of the foundation
of the Museum, has been of essential service.

My warmest thanks are due to M. Adrien de Mortillet, formerly secretary
of the Society of Anthropology of Paris, for most essential aid. He
kindly gave me a copy of a very rare pamphlet, entitled _Lamarck. Par un
Groupe de Transformistes, ses Disciples_. He also referred me to notices
bearing on the genealogy of Lamarck and his family in the _Revue de
Gascogne_ for 1876. To him also I am indebted for the privilege of
having electrotypes made of the five illustrations in the _Lamarck_, for
copies of the composite portrait of Lamarck by Dr. Gachet, and also for
a photograph of the _Acte de Naissance_ reproduced by the late
M. Salmon.

I have also to acknowledge the kindness shown me by Dr. J. Deniker, the
librarian of the Bibliothèque du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle.

I had begun in the museum library, which contains nearly if not every
one of Lamarck's publications, to prepare a bibliography of all of
Lamarck's writings, when, to my surprise and pleasure, I was presented
with a very full and elaborate one by the assistant-librarian,
M. Godefroy Malloisel.

To Professor Edmond Perrier I am indebted for a copy of his valuable
_Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel_, reprinted from the noble volume
commemorative of the centennial of the foundation of the Muséum
d'Histoire Naturelle, which has proved of much use.

Other sources from which biographical details have been taken are
Cuvier's _éloge_, and the notice of Lamarck, with a list of many of his
writings, in the _Revue biographique de la Société malacologique de
France_, 1886. This notice, which is illustrated by three portraits of
Lamarck, one of which has been reproduced, I was informed by M. Paul
Kleinsieck was prepared by the late J. R. Bourguignat, the eminent
malacologist and anthropologist. The notices by Professor Mathias Duval
and by L. A. Bourguin have been of essential service.

As regards the account of Lamarck's speculative and theoretical views, I
have, so far as possible, preferred, by abstracts and translations, to
let him tell his own story, rather than to comment at much length myself
on points about which the ablest thinkers and students differ so much.

It is hoped that Lamarck's writings referring to the evolution theory
may, at no distant date, be reprinted in the original, as they are not
bulky and could be comprised in a single volume.

This life is offered with much diffidence, though the pleasure of
collecting the materials and of putting them together has been very
great.

    BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.,
        _October, 1901._




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                                    PAGE

         I. BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER             1

        II. STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER                    15

       III. LAMARCK'S SHARE IN THE REORGANIZATION OF THE
            JARDIN DES PLANTES AND MUSEUM OF NATURAL
            HISTORY                                              23

        IV. PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOÖLOGY AT THE
            MUSEUM                                               32

         V. LAST DAYS AND DEATH                                  51

        VI. POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS
            OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SOME LATER
            BIOLOGISTS                                           64

       VII. LAMARCK'S WORK IN METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL
            SCIENCE                                              79

      VIII. LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY                            89

        IX. LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF INVERTEBRATE PALÆONTOLOGY    124

         X. LAMARCK'S OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY AND
            BIOLOGY                                             156

        XI. LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST                               173

       XII. LAMARCK THE ZOÖLOGIST                               180

      XIII. THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON AND OF
            GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE                                198

       XIV. THE VIEWS OF ERASMUS DARWIN                         216

        XV. WHEN DID LAMARCK CHANGE HIS VIEWS REGARDING THE     226
            MUTABILITY OF SPECIES?

       XVI. THE STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAMARCK'S VIEWS ON  232
            EVOLUTION BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF HIS
            "PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE"

      XVII. THE "PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE"                        279

     XVIII. LAMARCK'S THEORY AS TO THE EVOLUTION OF MAN         357

       XIX. LAMARCK'S THOUGHTS ON MORALS, AND ON THE RELATION   372
            BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

        XX. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LAMARCKISM AND DARWINISM;     382
            NEOLAMARCKISM

            BIBLIOGRAPHY                                        425




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


      ATTEMPT AT A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE PROFILE OF
      LAMARCK BY DR. GACHET (Photogravure)            _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING
                                                              PAGE

      BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FRONT VIEW }
                                        }                         4
      BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK    "    "   }

      ACT OF BIRTH                                                6

      AUTOGRAPH OF LAMARCK, JANUARY 25, 1802                     10

      LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS                             20

      BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW FROM THE WEST     }
                                                         }       42
      MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS, }
      1793-1829                                          }

      PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK, WHEN OLD AND BLIND, IN THE
      COSTUME OF A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE. ENGRAVED
      IN 1824                                                    54

      PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK                                       180

      MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED, 1793-1829       198

      É. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE                                   212




LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION. HIS LIFE AND WORK




CHAPTER I

BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER


The life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a man of genius who lived
far in advance of his age, and who died comparatively unappreciated and
neglected. But his original and philosophic views, based as they were on
broad conceptions of nature, and touching on the burning questions of
our day, have, after the lapse of a hundred years, gained fresh interest
and appreciation, and give promise of permanent acceptance.

The author of the _Flore Française_ will never be forgotten by his
countrymen, who called him the French Linné; and he who wrote the
_Animaux sans Vertèbres_ at once took the highest rank as the leading
zoölogist of his period. But Lamarck was more than a systematic
biologist of the first order. Besides rare experience and judgment in
the classification of plants and of animals, he had an unusually active,
inquiring, and philosophical mind, with an originality and boldness in
speculation, and soundness in reasoning and in dealing with such
biological facts as were known in his time, which have caused his views
as to the method of organic evolution to again come to the front.

As a zoölogical philosopher no one of his time approached Lamarck. The
period, however, in which he lived was not ripe for the hearty and
general adoption of the theory of descent. As in the organic world we
behold here and there prophetic types, anticipating, in their
generalized synthetic nature, the incoming, ages after, of more
specialized types, so Lamarck anticipated by more than half a century
the principles underlying the present evolutionary theories.

So numerous are now the adherents, in some form, of Lamarck's views,
that at the present time evolutionists are divided into Darwinians and
Lamarckians or Neolamarckians. The factors of organic evolution as
stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many, really comprise the
primary or foundation principles or initiative causes of the origin of
life-forms. Hence not only do many of the leading biologists of his
native country, but some of those of Germany, of the United States, and
of England, justly regard him as the founder of the theory of organic
evolution.

Besides this, Lamarck lived in a transition period. He prepared the way
for the scientific renascence in France. Moreover, his simple, unselfish
character was a rare one. He led a retired life. His youth was tinged
with romance, and during the last decade of his life he was blind. He
manfully and patiently bore adverse criticisms, ridicule,
forgetfulness, and inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his
theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to his dying day.

The biography of such a character is replete with interest, and the
memory of his unselfish and fruitful devotion to science should be
forever cherished. His life was also notable for the fact that after his
fiftieth year he took up and mastered a new science; and at a period
when many students of literature and science cease to be productive and
rest from their labors, he accomplished the best work of his life--work
which has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a philosophic
biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism comprises the fundamental principles of
evolution, and will always have to be taken into consideration in
accounting for the origin, not only of species, but especially of the
higher groups, such as orders, classes, and phyla.

This striking personage in the history of biological science, who has
made such an ineffaceable impression on the philosophy of biology,
certainly demands more than a brief _éloge_ to keep alive his memory.

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was born
August 1, 1744, at Bazentin-le-Petit. This little village is situated in
Picardy, or what is now the Department of the Somme, in the
Arrondissement de Péronne, Canton d'Albert, a little more than four
miles from Albert, between this town and Bapaume, and near Longueval,
the nearest post-office to Bazentin. The village of Bazentin-le-Grand,
composed of a few more houses than its sister hamlet, is seen half a
mile to the southeast, shaded by the little forest such as borders
nearly every town and village in this region. The two hamlets are
pleasantly situated in a richly cultivated country, on the chalk uplands
or downs of Picardy, amid broad acres of wheat and barley variegated
with poppies and the purple cornflower, and with roadsides shaded by
tall poplars.

The peasants to the number of 251 compose the diminishing population.
There were 356 in 1880, or about that date. The silence of the single
little street, with its one-storied, thatched or tiled cottages, is at
infrequent intervals broken by an elderly dame in her _sabots_, or by a
creaking, rickety village cart driven by a farmer-boy in blouse and
hob-nailed shoes. The largest inhabited building is the _mairie_, a
modern structure, at one end of which is the village school, where
fifteen or twenty urchins enjoy the instructions of the worthy teacher.
A stone church, built in 1774, and somewhat larger than the needs of the
hamlet at present require, raises its tower over the quiet scene.

Our pilgrimage to Bazentin had for its object the discovery of the
birthplace of Lamarck, of which we could obtain no information in Paris.
Our guide from Albert took us to the _mairie_, and it was with no little
satisfaction that we learned from the excellent village teacher,
M. Duval, that the house in which the great naturalist was born was
still standing, and but a few steps away, in the rear of the church and
of the _mairie_. With much kindness he left his duties in the
schoolroom, and accompanied us to the ancient structure.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FRONT VIEW]

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK]

The modest _château_ stands a few rods to the westward of the little
village, and was evidently the seat of the leading family of the place.
It faces east and is a two-storied house of the shape seen everywhere in
France, with its high, incurved roof; the walls, nearly a foot and a
half thick, built of brick; the corners and windows of blocks of white
limestone. It is about fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. Above
the roof formerly rose a small tower. There is no porch over the front
door. Within, a rather narrow hall passes through the centre, and opens
into a large room on each side. What was evidently the drawing-room or
_salon_ was a spacious apartment with a low white wainscot and a heavy
cornice. Over the large, roomy fireplace is a painting on the wood
panel, representing a rural scene, in which a shepherdess and her lover
are engaged in other occupations than the care of the flock of sheep
visible in the distance. Over the doorway is a smaller but quaint
painting of the same description. The house is uninhabited, and perhaps
uninhabitable--indeed almost a ruin--and is used as a storeroom for wood
and rubbish by the peasants in the adjoining house to the left, on the
south.

The ground in front was cultivated with vegetables, not laid down to a
lawn, and the land stretched back for perhaps three hundred to four
hundred feet between the old garden walls.

Here, amid these rural scenes, even now so beautiful and tranquil, the
subject of our sketch was born and lived through his infancy and early
boyhood.[1]

If his parents did not possess an ample fortune, they were blessed with
a numerous progeny, for Lamarck was the eleventh and youngest child, and
seems to have survived all the others. Biographers have differed as to
the date of the birth of Lamarck.[2] Happily the exact date had been
ascertained through the researches of M. Philippe Salmon; and M. Duval
kindly showed us in the thin volume of records, with its tattered and
torn leaves, the register of the _Acte de Naissance_, and made a copy of
it, as follows:

  _Extrait du Registre aux Actes de Baptême de la Commune de Bazentin,
  pour l'Année 1744._

  L'an mil sept cent quarante-quatre, le premier août est né en
  légitime mariage et le lendemain a été baptisé par moy curé
  soussigné Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine, fils de Messire Jacques
  Philippe de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck, seigneur des Bazentin grand
  et petit et de haute et puissante Dame Marie Françoise de Fontaine
  demeurant en leur château de Bazentin le petit, son parrain a été
  Messire Jean Baptiste de Fossé, prêtre-chanoine de l'église
  collégiale de St. Farcy de Péronne, y demeurant, sa marraine Dame
  Antoinette Françoise de Bucy, nièce de Messire Louis Joseph
  Michelet, chevalier, ancien commissaire de l'artillerie de France
  demeurante au château de Guillemont, qui ont signé avec mon dit
  sieur de Bazentin et nous.

  Ont signé: De Fossé, De Bucy Michelet, Bazentin. Cozette, curé.

[Illustration: ACT OF BIRTH]

Of Lamarck's parentage and ancestry there are fortunately some traces.
In the _Registre aux Actes de Baptême pour l'Année 1702_, still
preserved in the _mairie_ of Bazentin-le-Petit, the record shows that
his father was born in February, 1702, at Bazentin. The infant was
baptised February 16, 1702, the permission to the _curé_ by Henry,
Bishop of Amiens, having been signed February 3, 1702. Lamarck's
grandparents were, according to this certificate of baptism, Messire
Philippe de Monet de Lamarck, Ecuyer, Seigneur des Bazentin, and Dame
Magdeleine de Lyonne.

The family of Lamarck, as stated by H. Masson,[3] notwithstanding his
northern and almost Germanic name of Chevalier de Lamarck, originated in
the southwest of France. Though born at Bazentin, in old Picardy, it is
not less true that he descended on the paternal side from an ancient
house of Béarn, whose patrimony was very modest. This house was that of
Monet.

Another genealogist, Baron C. de Cauna,[4] tells us that there is no
doubt that the family of Monet in Bigorre[5] was divided. One of its
representatives formed a branch in Picardy in the reign of Louis XIV.
or later.

Lamarck's grandfather, Philippe de Monet, "seigneur de Bazentin et
autres lieux," was also "chevalier de l'ordre royal et militaire de
Saint-Louis, commandant pour le roi en la ville et château de Dinan,
pensionnaire de sa majesté."

The descendants of Philippe de Lamarck were, adds de Cauna, thus thrown
into two branches, or at least two offshoots or stems (_brisures_), near
Péronne. But the actual posterity of the Monet of Picardy was reduced to
a single family, claiming back, with good reason, to a southern origin.
One of its scions in the maternal line was a brilliant officer of the
military marine and also son-in-law of a very distinguished naval
officer.

The family of Monet was represented among the French nobility of 1789 by
Messires de Monet de Caixon and de Monet de Saint-Martin. By marriage
their grandson was connected with an honorable family of Montant, near
Saint-Sever-Cap.

Another authority, the Abbé J. Dulac, has thrown additional light on the
genealogy of the de Lamarck family, which, it may be seen, was for at
least three centuries a military one.[6] The family of Monet, Seigneur
de Saint-Martin et de Sombran, was maintained as a noble one by order of
the Royal Council of State of June 20, 1678. He descended (I) from
Bernard de Monet, esquire, captain of the château of Lourdes, who had as
a son (II) Étienne de Monet, esquire, who, by contract dated August 15,
1543, married Marguerite de Sacaze. He was the father of (III) Pierre
de Monet, esquire, "Seigneur d'Ast, en Béarn, guidon des gendarmes de la
compagnie du roi de Navarre." From him descended (IV) Étienne de Monet,
esquire, second of the name, "Seigneur d'Ast et Lamarque, de Julos." He
was a captain by rank, and bought the estate of Saint-Martin in 1592. He
married, in 1612, Jeanne de Lamarque, daughter of William de Lamarck,
"Seigneur de Lamarque et de Bretaigne." They had three children, the
third of whom was Philippe, "chevalier de Saint-Louis, commandant du
château de Dinan, Seigneur de Bazentin, en Picardy," who, as we have
already seen, was the father of the naturalist Lamarck, who lived from
1744 to 1829. The abbé relates that Philippe, the father of the
naturalist, was born at Saint-Martin, in the midst of Bigorre, "_in
pleine Bigorre_," and he very neatly adds that "the Bigorrais have the
right to claim for their land of flowers one of the glories of
botany."[7]

The name was at first variously spelled de Lamarque, de la Marck, or
de Lamarck. He himself signed his name, when acting as secretary of the
Assembly of Professors-administrative of the Museum of Natural History
during the years of the First Republic, as plain Lamarck.

The inquiry arises how, being the eleventh child, he acquired the title
of chevalier, which would naturally have become extinct with the death
of the oldest son. The Abbé Dulac suggests that the ten older of the
children had died, or that by some family arrangement he was allowed to
add the domanial name to the patronymic one. Certainly he never
tarnished the family name, which, had it not been for him, would have
remained in obscurity.

As to his father's tastes and disposition, what influence his mother had
in shaping his character, his home environment, as the youngest of
eleven children, the nature of his education in infancy and boyhood,
there are no sources of information. But several of his brothers entered
the army, and the domestic atmosphere was apparently a military one.

Philippe de Lamarck, with his large family, had endowed his first-born
son so that he could maintain the family name and title, and had found
situations for several of the others in the army. Jean Lamarck did not
manifest any taste for the clerical profession. He lived in a martial
atmosphere. For centuries his ancestors had borne arms. His eldest
brother had been killed in the breach at the siege of Berg-op-Zoom; two
others were still in the service, and in the troublous times at the
beginning of the war in 1756, a young man of high spirit and courage
would naturally not like to relinquish the prospect of renown and
promotion. But, yielding to the wishes of his father, he entered as a
student at the college of the Jesuits at Amiens.[8]

His father dying in 1760, nothing could induce the incipient abbé, then
seventeen years of age, to longer wear his bands. Immediately on
returning home he bought himself a wretched horse, for want of means to
buy a better one, and, accompanied by a poor lad of his village, he
rode across the country to join the French army, then campaigning in
Germany.

[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH OF LAMARCK, JANUARY 25, 1802

je prie le Citoyen qui assemble dans le Magazin de l'imprimerie du
Citoyen Agasse de remettre à Madame chevalier Cent exemplaires de mon
hydrogeologie, pour les Brocher.

Paris le 5 pluviose an dix

Lamarck]

He carried with him a letter of recommendation from one of his neighbors
on an adjoining estate in the country, Madame de Lameth, to M.
de Lastic, colonel of the regiment of Beaujolais.[9]

  "We can imagine [says Cuvier] the feelings of this officer on thus
  finding himself hampered with a boy whose puny appearance made him
  seem still younger than he was. However, he sent him to his
  quarters, and then busied himself with his duties. The period indeed
  was a critical one. It was the 16th of July, 1761. The Marshal
  de Broglie had just united his army with that of the Prince
  de Soubise, and the next day was to attack the allied army commanded
  by the Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. At the break of day M.
  de Lastic rode along the front of his corps, and the first man that
  met his gaze was the new recruit, who, without saying anything to
  him, had placed himself in the front rank of a company of
  grenadiers, and nothing could induce him to quit his post.

  "It is a matter of history that this battle, which bears the name of
  the little village of Fissingshausen, between Ham and Lippstadt, in
  Westphalia, was lost by the French, and that the two generals,
  mutually accusing each other of this defeat, immediately separated,
  and abandoned the campaign.

  "During the movement of the battle, de Lamarck's company was
  stationed in a position exposed to the direct fire of the enemy's
  artillery. In the confusion of the retreat he was forgotten. Already
  all the officers and non-commissioned officers had been killed;
  there remained only fourteen men, when the oldest grenadier, seeing
  that there were no more of the French troops in sight, proposed to
  the young volunteer, become so promptly commander, to withdraw his
  little troop. 'But we are assigned to this post,' said the boy, 'and
  we should not withdraw from it until we are relieved.' And he made
  them remain there until the colonel, seeing that the squad did not
  rally, sent him an orderly, who crept by all sorts of covered ways
  to reach him. This bold stand having been reported to the marshal,
  he promoted him on the field to the rank of an officer, although his
  order had prescribed that he should be very chary of these kinds of
  promotions."

His physical courage shown at this age was paralleled by his moral
courage in later years. The staying power he showed in immovably
adhering to his views on evolution through many years, and under the
direct and raking fire of harsh and unrelenting criticism and ridicule
from friend and foe, affords a striking contrast to the moral timidity
shown by Buffon when questioned by the Sorbonne. We can see that Lamarck
was the stuff martyrs are made of, and that had he been tried for heresy
he would have been another Tycho Brahe.

Soon after, de Lamarck was nominated to a lieutenancy; but so glorious a
beginning of his military career was most unexpectedly checked. A sudden
accident forced him to leave the service and entirely change his course
of life. His regiment had been, during peace, sent into garrison, first
at Toulon and then at Monaco. While there a comrade in play lifted him
by the head; this gave rise to an inflammation of the lymphatic glands
of the neck, which, not receiving the necessary attention on the spot,
obliged him to go to Paris for better treatment.

  "The united efforts [says Cuvier] of several surgeons met with no
  better success, and danger had become very imminent, when our
  _confrère_, the late M. Tenon, with his usual sagacity, recognized
  the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of
  which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treatment lasted for
  a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his
  resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure
  to devote himself to meditations."


FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the little chapel next the church lies buried, we were told by
M. Duval, a Protestant of the family of de Guillebon, the purchaser
(_acquéreur_) of the _château_. Whether the estate is now in the hands
of his heirs we did not ascertain.

[2] As stated by G. de Mortillet, the date of his birth is variously
given. Michaud's _Dictionnaire Biographique_ gives the date April 1;
other authors, April 11; others, the correct one, August 1, 1744.
(_Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, ses Disciples._ _L'Homme_,
iv. p. 289, 1887.)

[3] "Sur la maison de Viella--les Mortiers-brévise et les Montalembert
en Gascogne--et sur le naturaliste Lamarck." Par Hippolyte Masson.
(_Revue de Gascogne_, xvii., pp. 141-143, 1876.)

[4] _Ibid._, p. 194.

[5] A small town in southwestern France, near Lourdes and Pau; it is
about eight miles north of Tarbes, in Gascony.

[6] _Revue de Gascogne_, pp. 264-269, 1876.

[7] The abbé attempts to answer the question as to what place gave
origin to the name of Lamarck, and says:

"The author of the history of Béarn considered the cradle of the race to
have been the freehold of Marca, parish of Gou (Basses-Pyrénées). A
branch of the family established in le Magnoac changed its name of Marca
to that of La Marque." It was M. d'Ossat who gave rise to this change by
addressing his letters to M. de Marca (at the time when he was preceptor
of his nephew), sometimes under the name of M. Marca, sometimes
_M. la Marqua_, or of _M. de la Marca_, but more often still under that
of _M. de la Marque_, "with the object, no doubt, of making him a
Frenchman" ("_dans la vue sans doute de le franciser_"). (_Vie du
Cardinal d'Ossat_, tome i., p. 319.)

"To recall their origin, the branch of Magnoac to-day write their name
_Marque-Marca_. If the Marca of the historian belongs to Béarn, the
Lamarque of the naturalist, an orthographic name in principle, proceeds
from Bigorre, actually chosen (_désignée_) by _Lamarcq, Pontacq, or
Lamarque près Béarn_. That the _Lamarque_ of the botanist of the royal
cabinet distinguished himself from all the _Lamarques_ of Béarn or of
Bigorre, which it bears (_qu'il gise_) to this day in the
Hautes-Pyrénées, Canton d'Ossun, we have many proofs: Aast at some
distance, Bourcat and Couet all near l'Abbaye Laïque, etc. The village
so determined is called in turn _Marca_, _La Marque_, _Lamarque_; names
predestined to several destinations; judge then to the mercy of a
botanist, _Lamarck_, _La Marck_, _Delamarque_, _De Lamarck_, who shall
determine their number? As to the last, I only explain it by a fantasy
of the man who would de-Bigorrize himself in order to Germanize himself
in the hope, apparently, that at the first utterance of the name people
would believe that he was from the _outre Rhin_ rather than from the
borders of Gave or of Adour. Consequently a hundred times more learned
and a hundred times more worthy of a professorship in the Museum, where
Monet would seem (_entrevait_) much less than Lamarque."

It may be added that Béarn was an ancient province of southern France
nearly corresponding to the present Department of Basses-Pyrénées. Its
capital was Pau.

[8] We have been unable to ascertain the date when young Lamarck entered
the seminary. On making inquiries in June, 1899, at the Jesuits'
Seminary in Amiens, one of the faculty, after consultation with the
Father Superior, kindly gave us in writing the following information as
to the exact date: "The registers of the great seminary were carried
away during the French Revolution, and we do not know whither they have
been transported, and whether they still exist to-day. Besides, it is
very doubtful whether Lamarck resided here, because only ecclesiastics
preparing for receiving orders were received in the seminary. Do you not
confound the seminary with the ancient college of Rue Poste de Paris,
college now destroyed?"

[9] We are following the _Éloge_ of Cuvier almost verbatim, also
reproduced in the biographical notice in the _Revue biographique de la
Société Malacologique de France_, said to have been prepared by J. R.
Bourguignat.




CHAPTER II

STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER


The profession of arms had not led Lamarck to forget the principles of
physical science which he had received at college. During his sojourn at
Monaco the singular vegetation of that rocky country had attracted his
attention, and Chomel's _Traité des Plantes usuelles_ accidentally
falling into his hands had given him some smattering of botany.

Lodged at Paris, as he has himself said, in a room much higher up than
he could have wished, the clouds, almost the only objects to be seen
from his windows, interested him by their ever-changing shapes, and
inspired in him his first ideas of meteorology. There were not wanting
other objects to excite interest in a mind which had always been
remarkably active and original. He then realized, to quote from his
biographer, Cuvier, what Voltaire said of Condorcet, that solid enduring
discoveries can shed a lustre quite different from that of a commander
of a company of infantry. He resolved to study some profession. This
last resolution was but little less courageous than the first. Reduced
to a pension (_pension alimentaire_) of only 400 francs a year, he
attempted to study medicine, and while waiting until he had the time to
give to the necessary studies, he worked in the dreary office of a
bank.

The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a contemplative nature
like his, in his hours of work or leisure, in some degree consoled the
budding philosopher during this period of uncongenial labor, and when he
did have an opportunity of communicating his ideas to his friends, of
discussing them, of defending them against objection, the hardships of
his workaday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science
all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished.
Like many another rising genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal
for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed
the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his
long poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome
existence. He did not then know that the great Linné, the father of the
science he was to illuminate and so greatly to expand, also began life
in extreme poverty, and eked out his scanty livelihood by mending over
again for his own use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students.
(Cuvier.)

Bourguin[10] tells us that Lamarck's medical course lasted four years,
and this period of severe study--for he must have made it
such--evidently laid the best possible foundation that Paris could then
afford for his after studies. He seems, however, to have wavered in his
intentions of making medicine his life work, for he possessed a decided
taste for music. His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly
opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, though not without
difficulty.

At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet village[11] near
Paris, and there for a year they studied together science and history.
And now happened an event which proved to be the turning point, or
rather gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck's career and decided
his vocation in life. In one of their walks they met the philosopher and
sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about Lamarck's
acquaintance with this genius, for all the details of his life, both in
his early and later years, are pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had
attended at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, having by
good fortune met Rousseau, he probably improved the acquaintance, and,
found by Rousseau to be a congenial spirit, he was soon invited to
accompany him in his herborizations.

Still more recently Professor Giard[12] has unearthed from the works of
Rousseau the following statement by him regarding species: "Est-ce qu'à
proprement parler il n'existerait point d'espèces dans la nature, mais
seulement des individus?"[13] In his _Discours sur l'Inégalité parmi les
Hommes_ is the following passage, which shows, as Giard says, that
Rousseau perfectly understood the influence of the _milieu_ and of wants
on the organism; and this brilliant writer seems to have been the first
to suggest natural selection, though only in the case of man, when he
says that the weaker in Sparta were eliminated in order that the
superior and stronger of the race might survive and be maintained.

  "Accustomed from infancy to the severity of the weather and the
  rigors of the seasons, trained to undergo fatigue, and obliged to
  defend naked and without arms their life and their prey against
  ferocious beasts, or to escape them by flight, the men acquired an
  almost invariably robust temperament; the infants, bringing into the
  world the strong constitution of their fathers, and strengthening
  themselves by the same kind of exercise as produced it, have thus
  acquired all the vigor of which the human species is capable. Nature
  uses them precisely as did the law of Sparta the children of her
  citizens. She rendered strong and robust those with a good
  constitution, and destroyed all the others. Our societies differ in
  this respect, where the state, in rendering the children burdensome
  to the father, indirectly kills them before birth."[14]

Soon Lamarck abandoned not only a military career, but also music,
medicine, and the bank, and devoted himself exclusively to science. He
was now twenty-four years old, and, becoming a student of botany under
Bernard de Jussieu, for ten years gave unremitting attention to this
science, and especially to a study of the French flora.

Cuvier states that the _Flore Française_ appeared after "six months of
unremitting labor." However this may be, the results of over nine
preceding years of study, gathered together, written, and printed within
the brief period of half a year, was no hasty _tour de force_, but a
well-matured, solid work which for many years remained a standard one.

It brought him immediate fame. It appeared at a fortunate epoch. The
example of Rousseau and the general enthusiasm he inspired had made the
study of flowers very popular--"_une science à la mode_," as Cuvier
says--even among many ladies and in the world of fashion, so that the
new work of Lamarck, though published in three octavo volumes, had a
rapid success.

The preface was written by Daubenton.[15] Buffon also took much interest
in the work, opposing as it did the artificial system of Linné, for whom
he had, for other reasons, no great degree of affection. He obtained the
privilege of having the work published at the royal printing office at
the expense of the government, and the total proceeds of the sale of the
volumes were given to the author. This elaborate work at once placed
young Lamarck in the front rank of botanists, and now the first and
greatest honor of his life came to him. The young lieutenant,
disappointed in a military advancement, won his spurs in the field of
science. A place in botany had become vacant at the Academy of Sciences,
and M. de Lamarck having been presented in the second rank (_en seconde
ligne_), the ministry, a thing almost unexampled, caused him to be given
by the king, in 1779, the preference over M. Descemet, whose name was
presented before his, in the first rank, and who since then, and during
a long life, never could recover the place which he unjustly lost.[16]
"In a word, the poor officer, so neglected since the peace, obtained at
one stroke the good fortune, always very rare, and especially so at that
time, of being both the recipient of the favor of the Court and of the
public."[17]

[Illustration: LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS]

The interest and affection felt for him by Buffon were of advantage to
him in another way. Desiring to have his son, whom he had planned to be
his successor as Intendant of the Royal Garden, and who had just
finished his studies, enjoy the advantage of travel in foreign lands,
Buffon proposed to Lamarck to go with him as a guide and friend; and,
not wishing him to appear as a mere teacher, he procured for him, in
1781, a commission as Royal Botanist, charged with visiting the foreign
botanical gardens and museums, and of placing them in communication with
those of Paris. His travels extended through portions of the years 1781
and 1782.

According to his own statement,[18] in pursuit of this object he
collected not only rare and interesting plants which were wanting in the
Royal Garden, but also minerals and other objects of natural history new
to the Museum. He went to Holland, Germany, Hungary, etc., visiting
universities, botanical gardens, and museums of natural history. He
examined the mines of the Hartz in Hanover, of Freyburg in Saxony, of
Chemnitz and of Cremnitz in Hungary, making there numerous observations
which he incorporated in his work on physics, and sent collections of
ores, minerals, and seeds to Paris. He also made the acquaintance of the
botanists Gleditsch at Berlin, Jacquin at Vienna, and Murray at
Göttingen. He obtained some idea of the magnificent establishments in
these countries devoted to botany, "and which," he says, "ours do not
yet approach, in spite of all that had been done for them during the
last thirty years."[19]

On his return, as he writes, he devoted all his energies and time to
research and to carrying out his great enterprises in botany; as he
stated: "Indeed, for the last ten years my works have obliged me to keep
in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen,
engravers, and printers."[20]

But the favor of Buffon, powerful as his influence was,[21] together
with the aid of the minister, did not avail to give Lamarck a permanent
salaried position. Soon after his return from his travels, however, M.
d'Angiviller, the successor of Buffon as Intendant of the Royal Garden,
who was related to Lamarck's family, created for him the position of
keeper of the herbarium of the Royal Garden, with the paltry salary of
1,000 francs.

According to the same _État_, Lamarck had now been attached to the Royal
Garden five years. In 1789 he received as salary only 1,000 livres or
francs; in 1792 it was raised to the sum of 1,800 livres.


FOOTNOTES:

[10] _Les Grand Naturalists Français au Commencement du XIX Siècle._

[11] Was this quiet place in the region just out of Paris possibly near
Mont Valérien? He must have been about twenty-two years old when he met
Rousseau and began to study botany seriously. His _Flore Française_
appeared in 1778, when he was thirty-four years old. Rousseau, at the
end of his checkered life, from 1770 to 1778, lived in Paris. He often
botanized in the suburbs; and Mr. Morley, in his _Rousseau_, says that
"one of his greatest delights was to watch Mont Valérien in the sunset"
(p. 436). Rousseau died in Paris in 1778. That Rousseau expressed
himself vaguely in favor of evolution is stated by Isidore Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, who quotes a "_Phrase, malheureusement un peu ambiguë, qui
semble montrer, dans se grand écrivain, un partisan de plus de la
variabilité du type_." (_Résumé des Vues sur l'espèce organique_, p. 18,
Paris, 1889.) The passage is quoted in Geoffroy's _Histoire Naturelle
Générale des Règnes organiques_, ii., ch. I., p. 271. I have been unable
to verify this quotation.

[12] _Leçon d'Ouverture du Cours de l'Évolution des Êtres organisés._
Paris, 1888.

[13] _Dictionnaire des Termes de la Botanique._ Art. APHRODITE.

[14] _Discours sur l'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les
Hommes._ 1754.

[15] Since 1742, the keeper and demonstrator of the Cabinet, who shared
with Thouin, the chief gardener, the care of the Royal Gardens.
Daubenton was at that time the leading anatomist of France, and after
Buffon's death he gathered around him all the scientific men who
demanded the transformation of the superannuated and incomplete Jardin
du Roi, and perhaps initiated the movement which resulted five years
later in the creation of the present Museum of Natural History. (Hamy,
_l. c._, p. 12.)

[16] De Mortillet (_Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes_, p. 11)
states that Lamarck was elected to the Academy at the age of thirty; but
as he was born in 1744, and the election took place in 1779, he must
have been thirty-five years of age.

[17] Cuvier's _Éloge_, p. viii.; also _Revue biographique de la Société
Malacologique_, p. 67.

[18] See letters to the Committee of Public Instruction.

[19] Cuvier's _Éloge_, p. viii; also Bourguignat in _Revue biog. Soc.
Malacologique_, p. 67.

[20] He received no remuneration for this service. As was afterwards
stated in the National Archives, _État des personnes attachées au Muséum
National d'Histoire Naturelle a l'époque du messidor an II de la
République_, he "sent to this establishment seeds of rare plants,
interesting minerals, and observations made during his travels in
Holland, Germany, and in France. He did not receive any compensation for
this service."

[21] "The illustrious Intendant of the Royal Garden and Cabinet had
concentrated in his hands the most varied and extensive powers. Not only
did he hold, like his predecessors, the _personnel_ of the establishment
entirely at his discretion, but he used the appropriations which were
voted to him with a very great independence. Thanks to the universal
renown which he had acquired both in science and in literature, Buffon
maintained with the men who succeeded one another in office relations
which enabled him to do almost anything he liked at the Royal Garden."
His manner to public men, as Condorcet said, was conciliatory and
tactful, and to his subordinates he was modest and unpretending.
(Professor G. T. Hamy, _Les Derniers Jours du Jardin du Roi_, etc.,
p. 3.) Buffon, after nearly fifty years of service as Intendant, died
April 16, 1788.




CHAPTER III

LAMARCK'S SHARE IN THE REORGANIZATION OF THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AND
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY


Even in his humble position as keeper of the herbarium, with its
pitiable compensation, Lamarck, now an eminent botanist, with a European
reputation, was by no means appreciated or secure in his position. He
was subjected to many worries, and, already married and with several
children, suffered from a grinding poverty. His friend and supporter,
La Billarderie, was a courtier, with much influence at the Tuileries,
but as Intendant of the Royal Garden without the least claim to
scientific fitness for the position; and in 1790 he was on the point of
discharging Lamarck.[22] On the 20th of August the Finance Committee
reduced the expenses of the Royal Garden and Cabinet, and, while raising
the salary of the professor of botany, to make good the deficiency thus
ensuing suppressed the position of keeper of the herbarium, filled by
Lamarck. Lamarck, on learning of this, acted promptly, and though in
this cavalier way stricken off from the rolls of the Royal Garden, he
at once prepared, printed, and distributed among the members of the
National Assembly an energetic claim for restoration to his office.[23]
His defence formed two brochures; in one he gave an account of his life,
travels, and works, and in the other he showed that the place which he
filled was a pressing necessity, and could not be conveniently or
usefully added to that of the professor of botany, who was already
overworked.

This manly and able plea in his own defence also comprised a broad,
comprehensive plan for the organization and development of a great
national museum, combining both vast collections and adequate means of
public instruction. The paper briefly stated, in courteous language,
what he wished to say to public men, in general animated with good
intentions, but little versed in the study of the sciences and the
knowledge of their application. It praised, in fit terms, the work of
the National Assembly, and gave, without too much emphasis, the
assurance of an entire devotion to the public business. Then in a very
clear and comprehensive way were given all the kinds of service which an
establishment like the Royal Garden should render to the sciences and
arts, and especially to agriculture, medicine, commerce, etc. Museums,
galleries, and botanical gardens; public lectures and demonstrations in
the museum and school of botany; an office for giving information, the
distribution of seeds, etc.--all the resources already so varied, as
well as the facilities for work at the Jardin, passed successively in
review before the representatives of the country, and the address ended
in a modest request to the Assembly that its author be allowed a few
days to offer some observations regarding the future organization of
this great institution.

The Assembly, adopting the wise views announced in the manifest which
had been presented by the officers of the Jardin and Cabinet, sent the
address to the Committee, and gave a month's time to the petitioners to
prepare and present a plan and regulations which should establish the
organization of their establishment.[24]

It was in 1790 that the decisive step was taken by the officers of the
Royal Garden[25] and Cabinet of Natural History which led to the
organization of the present Museum of Natural History as it is to-day.
Throughout the proceedings, Lamarck, as at the outset, took a prominent
part, his address having led the Assembly to invite the officers of the
double establishment to draw up rules for its government.

The officers met together August 23d, and their distrust and hostility
against the Intendant were shown by their nomination of Daubenton, the
Nestor of the French savants, to the presidency, although
La Billarderie, as representing the royal authority, was present at the
meeting. At the second meeting (August 24th) he took no part in the
proceedings, and absented himself from the third, held on August 27,
1790. It will be seen that even while the office of Intendant lasted,
that official took no active part in the meetings or in the work of the
institution, and from that day to this it has been solely under the
management of a director and scientific corps of professors, all of them
original investigators as well as teachers. Certainly the most practical
and efficient sort of organization for such an establishment.[26]

Lamarck, though holding a place subordinate to the other officers, was
present, as the records of the proceedings of the officers of the Jardin
des Plantes at this meeting show.

During the middle of 1791, the Intendant, La Billarderie, after "four
years of incapacity," placed his resignation in the hands of the king.
The Minister of the Interior, instead of nominating Daubenton as
Intendant, reserved the place for a _protégé_, and, July 1, 1791, sent
in the name of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the
distinguished author of _Paul et Virginie_ and of _Études sur la
Nature_. The new Intendant was literary in his tastes, fond of nature,
but not a practical naturalist. M. Hamy wittily states that "Bernardin
Saint-Pierre contemplated and dreamed, and in his solitary meditations
had imagined a system of the world which had nothing in common with that
which was to be seen in the Faubourg Saint Victor, and one can readily
imagine the welcome that the officers of the Jardin gave to the singular
naturalist the Tuileries had sent them."[27]

Lamarck suffered an indignity from the intermeddling of this second
Intendant of the Jardin. In his budget of expenses[28] sent to the
Minister of the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion to
refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering way, which may have
both amused and disgusted him.

But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing to a close, and a
new era in French natural science, signalized by the reorganization of
the Jardin and Cabinet under the name of the _Muséum d'Histoire
Naturelle_, was dawning. On the 6th of February, 1793, the National
Convention, at the request of Lakanal,[29] ordered the Committees of
Public Instruction and of Finances to at once make a report on the new
organization of the administration of the Jardin des Plantes.

Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired into the condition and
needs of the establishment; Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure
of 1790, written by Lamarck. The next day Lakanal, after a short
conference with his colleagues of the Committee of Public Instruction,
read in the tribune a short report and a decree which the Committee
adopted without discussion.

Their minds were elsewhere, for grave news had come in from all
quarters. The Austrians were bombarding Valenciennes, the Prussians had
invested Mayence, the Spanish were menacing Perpignan, and bands of
Vendeans had seized Saumur after a bloody battle; while at Caen, at
Evreux, at Bordeaux, at Marseilles, and elsewhere, muttered the thunders
of the outbreaks provoked by the proscription of the Girondins. So that
under these alarming conditions the decree of the 10th of June, in
spite of its importance to science and higher learning in France, was
passed without discussion.

In his _Lamarck_ De Mortillet states explicitly that Lamarck, in his
address of 1790, changed the name of the Jardin du Roi to Jardin des
Plantes.[30] As the article states, "Entirely devoted to his studies,
Lamarck entered into no intrigue under the falling monarchy, so he
always remained in a position straitened and inferior to his merits." It
was owing to this and his retired mode of life that the single-minded
student of nature was not disturbed in his studies and meditations by
the Revolution. And when the name of the Jardin du Roi threatened to be
fatal to this establishment, it was he who presented a memoir to
transform it, under the name of Jardin des Plantes, into an institution
of higher instruction, with six professors. In 1793, Lakanal adopted
Lamarck's plan, and, enlarging upon it, created twelve chairs for the
teaching of the natural sciences.

Bourguin thus puts the matter:

  "In June, 1793, Lakanal, having learned that 'the Vandals' (that is
  his expression) had demanded of the tribune of the Convention the
  suppression of the Royal Garden, as being an annex of the king's
  palace, recurred to the memoirs of Lamarck presented in 1790 and
  gave his plan of organization. He inspired himself with Lamarck's
  ideas, but enlarged upon them. Instead of six positions of
  professors-administrative, which Lamarck asked for, Lakanal
  established twelve chairs for the teaching of different branches of
  natural science."[31]


FOOTNOTES:

[22] Another intended victim of La Billarderie, whose own salary had
been at the same time reduced, was Faujas de Saint-Fond, one of the
founders of geology. But his useful discoveries in economic geology
having brought him distinction, the king had generously pensioned him,
and he was retained in office on the printed _État_ distributed by the
Committee of Finance. (Hamy, _l. c._, p. 29.)

[23] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 29. This brochure, of which I possess a copy, is
a small quarto pamphlet of fifteen pages, signed, on the last page,
"_J. B. Lamarck, ancien Officier au Régiment de Beaujolais, de
l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, Botaniste attaché au Cabinet
d'Histoire Naturelle du Jardin des Plantes_."

[24] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 31; also _Pièces Justificatives_, Nos. 11 _et_
12, pp. 97-101. The Intendant of the Garden was completely ignored, and
his unpopularity and inefficiency led to his resignation. But meanwhile,
in his letter to Condorcet, the perpetual Secretary of the Institute of
France, remonstrating against the proposed suppression by the Assembly
of the place of Intendant, he partially retracted his action against
Lamarck, saying that Lamarck's work, "_peut être utile, mais n'est pas
absolutement nécessaire_." The Intendant, as Hamy adds, knew well the
value of the services rendered by Lamarck at the Royal Garden, and that,
as a partial recompense, he had been appointed botanist to the museum.
He also equally well knew that the author of the _Flore Française_ was
in a most precarious situation and supported on his paltry salary a
family of seven persons, as he was already at this time married and had
five children. "But his own place was in peril, and he did not hesitate
to sacrifice the poor savant whom he had himself installed as keeper of
the herbarium." (Hamy, _l. c._, pp. 34, 35.)

[25] The first idea of the foundation of the Jardin dates from 1626, but
the actual carrying out of the conception was in 1635. The first act of
installation took place in 1640. Gui de la Brosse, in order to please
his high protectors, the first physicians of the king, named his
establishment _Jardin des Plantes Medicinales_. It was renovated by
Fagon, who was born in the Jardin, and whose mother was the niece of Gui
de la Brosse. By his disinterestedness, activity, and great scientific
capacity, he regenerated the garden, and under his administration
flourished the great professors, Duverney, Tournefort, Geoffroy the
chemist, and others (Perrier, _l. c._, p. 59). Fagon was
succeeded by Buffon, "the new legislator and second founder."
His Intendancy lasted from 1739 to 1788.

[26] Three days after, August 30th, the report was ready, the discussion
began, and the foundations of the new organization were definitely laid.
"No longer any Jardin or Cabinets, but a Museum of Natural History,
whose aim was clearly defined. No officers with unequal functions; all
are professors and all will give instruction. They elect themselves and
present to the king _a candidate for each vacant place_. _Finally, the
general administration of the Museum will be confided to the officers of
the establishment_, this implying the suppression of the Intendancy."
(Hamy, _l. c._, p. 37.)

[27] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 37. The Faubourg Saint Victor was a part of the
Quartier Latin, and included the Jardin des Plantes.

[28] _Devis de la Dépense du Jardin National des Plantes et du Cabinet
d'Histoire Naturelle pour l'Année 1793_, presented to the National
Convention by Citoyen Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In it appeared a note
relative to Lamarck, which, after stating that, though full of zeal and
of knowledge of botany, his time was not entirely occupied; that for two
months he had written him in regard to the duties of his position;
referred to the statements of two of his seniors, who repeated the old
gossip as to the claim of La Billarderie that his place was useless, and
also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system of
Linné in the arrangement of the herbarium, added: "However, desirous of
retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the position which he
needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after several
conversations with the older officers of the Jardin, I have believed
that, M. Desfontaines being charged with the botanical lectures in the
school, and M. Jussieu in the neighborhood of Paris, it would be well to
send M. La Marck to herborize in some parts of the kingdom, in order to
complete the French flora, as this will be to his taste, and at the same
time very useful to the progress of botany; thus everybody will be
employed and satisfied."--Perrier, _Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel_,
pp. 13, 14. (Copied from the National Archives.) "The life of Bernardin
de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as irregular as that of his friend
and master [Rousseau]. But his character was essentially crafty and
selfish, like that of many other sentimentalists of the first order."
(Morley's _Rousseau_, p. 437, footnote.)

[29] Joseph Lakanal was born in 1762, and died in 1845. He was a
professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the
faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative
(_député_) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational
questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and
elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving from
a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific
institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for the
death of Louis XVI.

Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Institute,
what is now the Institut de France, and was charged with designating the
first forty-eight members, who should elect all the others. He was by
the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as a regicide at the
second restoration, he sailed for the United States, where he was warmly
welcomed by Jefferson. The United States Congress voted him five hundred
acres of land. The government of Louisiana offered him the presidency of
its university, which, however, he did not accept. In 1825 he went to
live on the shores of Mobile Bay on land which he purchased from the
proceeds of the sale of the land given him by Congress. Here he became a
pioneer and planter.

In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and
offered his services to the new government, but received no answer and
was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the initiative of
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reëlection to the French
Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. He lived in
retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his death in 1845
in writing a book entitled _Séjour d'un Membre de l'Institut de France
aux États-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans_. The manuscript mysteriously
disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, _Grand
Dictionnaire Universel_, Art. LAKANAL.) His bust now occupies a
prominent place among those of other great men in the French Academy of
Sciences.

[30] This is seen to be the case by the title of the pamphlet: _Mémoire
sur les Cabinets d'Histoire Naturelle, et particulièrement sur celui du
Jardin des Plantes_.

[31] Bourguin also adds that "on one point Lamarck, with more foresight,
went farther than Lakanal. He had insisted on the necessity of the
appointment of four demonstrators for zoölogy. In the decree of June 10,
1793, they were even reduced to two. Afterwards they saw that this
number was insufficient, and to-day (1863) the department of zoölogy is
administered at the museum by four professors, in conformity with the
division indicated by Lamarck."




CHAPTER IV

PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOÖLOGY AT THE MUSEUM


Lamarck's career as a botanist comprised about twenty-five years. We now
come to the third stage of his life--Lamarck the zoölogist and
evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year when he assumed the duties of
his professorship of the zoölogy of the invertebrate animals; and at a
period when many men desire rest and freedom from responsibility, with
the vigor of an intellectual giant Lamarck took upon his shoulders new
labors in an untrodden field both in pure science and philosophic
thought.

It was now the summer of 1793, and on the eve of the Reign of Terror,
when Paris, from early in October until the end of the year, was in the
deadliest throes of revolution. The dull thud of the guillotine, placed
in front of the Tuileries, in the Place de la Revolution, which is now
the Place de la Concorde, a little to the east of where the obelisk of
Luxor now stands, could almost be heard by the quiet workers in the
Museum, for sansculottism in its most aggressive and hideous forms raged
not far from the Jardin des Plantes, then just on the border of the
densest part of the Paris of the first Revolution. Lavoisier, the
founder of modern chemistry, was guillotined some months later. The Abbé
Haüy, the founder of crystallography, had been, the year previous,
rescued from prison by young Geoffroy St. Hilaire, his neck being barely
saved from the gleaming axe. Roland, the friend of science and letters,
had been so hunted down that at Rouen, in a moment of despair, on
hearing of his wife's death, he thrust his sword-cane through his heart.
Madame Roland had been beheaded, as also a cousin of her husband, and we
can well imagine that these fateful summer and autumn days were scarcely
favorable to scientific enterprises.[32] Still, however, amid the loud
alarums of this social tempest, the Museum underwent a new birth which
proved not to be untimely. The Minister of the Interior (Garat) invited
the professors of the Museum to constitute an assembly to nominate a
director and a treasurer, and he begged them to present extracts of
their deliberations for him to send to the executive council, "under the
supervision of which the National Museum is for the future placed;"
though in general the assembly only reported to the Minister matters
relating to the expenses, the first annual grant of the Museum being
100,000 livres.

Four days after, June 14th, the assembly met and adopted the name of the
establishment in the following terms: _Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle
décrété par la Convention Nationale le 10 Juin, 1793_; and at a meeting
held on the 9th of July the assembly definitely organized the first
bureau, with Daubenton as director, Thouin treasurer, and Desfontaines
secretary. Lamarck, as the records show, was present at all these
meetings, and at the first one, June 14th, Lamarck and Fourcroy were
designated as commissioners for the formation of the Museum library.

All this was done without the aid or presence of Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre, the Intendant. The Minister of the Interior, meanwhile,
had communicated to him the decision of the National Convention, and
invited him to continue his duties up to the moment when the new
organization should be established. After remaining in his office until
July 9th, he retired from the Museum August 7th following, and finally
withdrew to the country at Essones.

The organization of the Museum is the same now as in 1793, having for
over a century been the chief biological centre of France, and with its
magnificent collections was never more useful in the advancement of
science than at this moment.

Let us now look at the composition of the assembly of professors, which
formed the Board of Administration of the Museum at the time of his
appointment.

The associates of Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who had already been
connected with the Royal Garden and Cabinet, were Daubenton, Thouin,
Desfontaines, Portal, and Mertrude. The Nestor of the faculty was
Daubenton, who was born in 1716. He was the collaborator of Buffon in
the first part of his _Histoire Naturelle_, and the author of treatises
on the mammals and of papers on the bats and other mammals, also on
reptiles, together with embryological and anatomical essays. Thouin, the
professor of horticulture, was the veteran gardener and architect of the
Jardin des Plantes, and withal a most useful man. He was affable,
modest, genial, greatly beloved by his students, a man of high
character, and possessing much executive ability. A street near the
Jardin was named after him. He was succeeded by Bosc. Desfontaines
had the chair of botany, but his attainments as a botanist were
mediocre, and his lectures were said to have been tame and
uninteresting. Portal taught human anatomy, while Mertrude lectured on
vertebrate anatomy; his chair was filled by Cuvier in 1795.

Of this group Lamarck was _facile princeps_, as he combined great
sagacity and experience as a systematist with rare intellectual and
philosophic traits. For this reason his fame has perhaps outlasted that
of his young contemporary, Geoffroy St. Hilaire.

The necessities of the Museum led to the division of the chair of
zoölogy, botany being taught by Desfontaines. And now began a new
era in the life of Lamarck. After twenty-five years spent in botanical
research he was compelled, as there seemed nothing else for him to
undertake, to assume charge of the collection of invertebrate animals,
and to him was assigned that enormous, chaotic mass of forms then known
as molluscs, insects, worms, and microscopic animals. Had he continued
to teach botany, we might never have had the Lamarck of biology and
biological philosophy. But turned adrift in a world almost unexplored,
he faced the task with his old-time bravery and dogged persistence, and
at once showed the skill of a master mind in systematic work.

The two new professorships in zoölogy were filled, one by Lamarck,
previously known as a botanist, and the other by the young Étienne
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, then twenty-two years old, who was at that time a
student of Haüy, and in charge of the minerals, besides teaching
mineralogy with especial reference to crystallography.

To Geoffroy was assigned the four classes of vertebrates, but in reality
he only occupied himself with the mammals and birds. Afterwards
Lacépède[33] took charge of the reptiles and fishes. On the other hand,
Lamarck's field comprised more than nine-tenths of the animal kingdom.
Already the collections of insects, crustacea, worms, molluscs,
echinoderms, corals, etc., at the Museum were enormous. At this time
France began to send out those exploring expeditions to all parts of the
globe which were so numerous and fruitful during the first third of the
nineteenth century. The task of arranging and classifying single-handed
this enormous mass of material was enough to make a young man quail, and
it is a proof of the vigor, innate ability, and breadth of view of the
man that in this pioneer work he not only reduced to some order this
vast horde of forms, but showed such insight and brought about such
radical reforms in zoölogical classification, especially in the
foundation and limitation of certain classes, an insight no one before
him had evinced. To him and to Latreille much of the value of the _Règne
Animal_ of Cuvier, as regards invertebrate classes, is due.

The exact title of the chair held by Lamarck is given in the _État_ of
persons attached to the National Museum of Natural History at the date
of the 1er messidor, an II. of the Republic (1794), where he is
mentioned as follows: "LAMARCK--fifty years old; married for the second
time; wife _enceinte_; six children; professor of zoölogy, of insects,
of worms, and microscopic animals." His salary, like that of the other
professors, was put at 2,868 livres, 6 sous, 8 deniers.[34]

Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire[35] has related how the professorship was
given to Lamarck.

  "The law of 1793 had prescribed that all parts of the natural
  sciences should be equally taught. The insects, shells, and an
  infinity of organisms--a portion of creation still almost
  unknown--remained to be treated in such a course. A desire to comply
  with the wishes of his colleagues, members of the administration,
  and without doubt, also, the consciousness of his powers as an
  investigator, determined M. de Lamarck: this task, so great, and
  which would tend to lead him into numberless researches; this
  friendless, unthankful task he accepted--courageous resolution,
  which has resulted in giving us immense undertakings and great and
  important works, among which posterity will distinguish and honor
  forever the work which, entirely finished and collected into seven
  volumes, is known under the name of _Animaux sans Vertèbres_."

Before his appointment to this chair Lamarck had devoted considerable
attention to the study of conchology, and already possessed a rather
large collection of shells. His last botanical paper appeared in 1800,
but practically his botanical studies were over by 1793.

During the early years of the Revolution, namely, from 1789 to and
including 1791, Lamarck published nothing. Whether this was naturally
due to the social convulsions and turmoil which raged around the Jardin
des Plantes, or to other causes, is not known. In 1792, however, Lamarck
and his friends and colleagues, Bruguière, Olivier, and the Abbé Haüy,
founded the _Journal d'Histoire Naturelle_, which contains nineteen
botanical articles, two on shells, besides one on physics, by Lamarck.
These, with many articles by other men of science, illustrated by
plates, indicate that during the years of social unrest and upheaval in
Paris, and though France was also engaged in foreign wars, the
philosophers preserved in some degree, at least, the traditional calm of
their profession, and passed their days and nights in absorption in
matters biological and physical. In 1801 appeared his _Système des
Animaux sans Vertèbres_, preceded by the opening discourse of his
lectures on the lower animals, in which his views on the origin of
species were first propounded. During the years 1793-1798, or for a
period of six years, he published nothing on zoölogy, and during this
time only one paper appeared, in 1798, on the influence of the moon on
the earth's atmosphere. But as his memoirs on fire and on sound were
published in 1798, it is evident that his leisure hours during this
period, when not engaged in museum work and the preparation of his
lectures, were devoted to meditations on physical and meteorological
subjects, and most probably it was towards the end of this period that
he brooded over and conceived his views on organic evolution.

It appears that he was led, in the first place, to conchological studies
through his warm friendship for a fellow naturalist, and this is one of
many proofs of his affectionate, generous nature. The touching story is
told by Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire.[36]

  "It was impossible to assign him a professorship of botany. M. de
  Lamarck, then forty-nine years old, accepted this change in his
  scientific studies to take charge of that which everybody had
  neglected; because it was, indeed, a heavy load, this branch of
  natural history, where, with so varied relations, everything was to
  be created. On one group he was a little prepared, but it was by
  accident; a self-sacrifice to friendship was the cause. For it was
  both to please his friend Bruguière as well as to penetrate more
  deeply into the affections of this very reserved naturalist, and
  also to converse with him in the only language which he wished to
  hear, which was restricted to conversations on shells, that M. de
  Lamarck had made some conchological studies. Oh, how, in 1793, did
  he regret that his friend had gone to Persia! He had wished, he had
  planned, that he should take the professorship which it was proposed
  to create. He would at least supply his place; it was in answer to
  the yearnings of his soul, and this affectionate impulse became a
  fundamental element in the nature of one of the greatest of
  zoölogical geniuses of our epoch."

Once settled in his new line of work, Lamarck, the incipient zoölogist,
at a period in life when many students of less flexible and energetic
natures become either hide-bound and conservative, averse to taking up a
different course of study, or actually cease all work and rust
out--after a half century of his life had passed, this rare spirit,
burning with enthusiasm, charged like some old-time knight or explorer
into a new realm and into "fresh fields and pastures new." His spirit,
still young and fresh after nearly thirty years of mental toil, so
unrequited in material things, felt a new stimulus as he began to
investigate the lower animals, so promising a field for discovery.

He said himself:

  "That which is the more singular is that the most important
  phenomena to be considered have been offered to our meditations only
  since the time when attention has been paid to the animals least
  perfect, and when researches on the different complications of the
  organization of these animals have become the principal foundation
  of their study. It is not less singular to realize that it was
  almost always from the examination of the smallest objects which
  nature presents to us, and that of considerations which seem to us
  the most minute, that we have obtained the most important knowledge
  to enable us to arrive at the discovery of her laws, and to
  determine her course."

After a year of preparation he opened his course at the Museum in the
spring of 1794. In his introductory lecture, given in 1803, after ten
years of work on the lower animals, he addressed his class in these
words:

  "Indeed it is among those animals which are the most multiplied and
  numerous in nature, and the most ready to regenerate themselves,
  that we should seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course
  of nature, and on the means she has employed in the creation of her
  innumerable productions. In this case we perceive that, relatively
  to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the
  invertebrate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature,
  the singular diversity of their systems of organization and of their
  means of multiplication, their increasing simplification, and the
  extreme fugacity of those which compose the lowest orders of these
  animals, show us, much better than the higher animals, the true
  course of nature, and the means which she has used and which she
  still unceasingly employs to give existence to all the living bodies
  of which we have knowledge."

During this decade (1793-1803) and the one succeeding, Lamarck's mind
grew and expanded. Before 1801, however much he may have brooded over
the matter, we have no utterances in print on the transformation theory.
His studies on the lower animals, and his general knowledge of the
vertebrates derived from the work of his contemporaries and his
observations in the Museum and menagerie, gave him a broad grasp of the
entire animal kingdom, such as no one before him had. As the result, his
comprehensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, enabled him
to appreciate the series from monad (his _ébauche_) to man, the range of
forms from the simple to the complex. Even though not a comparative
anatomist like Cuvier, he made use of the latter's discoveries, and
could understand and appreciate the gradually increasing complexity of
forms; and, unlike Cuvier, realize that they were blood relations, and
not separate, piece-meal creations. Animal life, so immeasurably higher
than vegetable forms, with its highly complex physiological functions
and varied means of reproduction, and the relations of its forms to each
other and to the world around, affords facts for evolution which were
novel to Lamarck, the descriptive botanist.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW, FROM THE WEST]

[Illustration: MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS.
1793-1829]

In accordance with the rules of the Museum, which required that all the
professors should be lodged within the limits of the Jardin, the choice
of lodgings being given to the oldest professors, Lamarck, at the time
of his appointment, took up his abode in the house now known as the
Maison de Buffon, situated on the opposite side of the Jardin des
Plantes from the house afterwards inhabited by Cuvier, and in the angle
between the Galerie de Zoologie and the Museum library.[37] With little
doubt the windows of his study, where his earlier addresses, the
_Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivans_, and the _Philosophie
Zoologique_, were probably written, looked out upon what is now the
court on the westerly side of the house, that facing the Rue Geoffroy
St. Hilaire.

At the time of his entering on his duties as professor of zoölogy,
Lamarck was in his fiftieth year. He had married twice and was the
father of six children, and without fortune. He married for a third, and
afterwards for a fourth time, and in all, seven children were born to
him, as in the year (1794) the minute referring to his request for an
indemnity states: "Il est chargé de sept enfans dont un est sur les
vaisseaux de la République." Another son was an artist, as shown by the
records of the Assembly of the Museum for September 23, 1814, when he
asked for a chamber in the lodgings of Thouin, for the use of his son,
"_peintre_."

Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in 1829, spoke of one of his sons, M. Auguste de
Lamarck, as a skilful and highly esteemed engineer of Ponts-et-Chaussées,
then advantageously situated.

But man cannot live by scientific researches and philosophic meditations
alone. The history of Lamarck's life is painful from beginning to end.
With his large family and slender salary he was never free from carking
cares and want. On the 30 fructidor, an II. of the Republic, the
National Convention voted the sum of 300,000 livres, with which an
indemnity was to be paid to citizens eminent in literature and art.
Lamarck had sacrificed much time and doubtless some money in the
preparation and publication of his works, and he felt that he had a just
claim to be placed on the list of those who had been useful to the
Republic, and at the same time could give proof of their good
citizenship, and of their right to receive such indemnity or
appropriation.

Accordingly, in 1795 he sent in a letter, which possesses much
autobiographical interest, to the Committee of Public Instruction, in
which he says:

  "During the twenty-six years that he has lived in Paris the citizen
  Lamarck has unceasingly devoted himself to the study of natural
  history, and particularly botany. He has done it successfully, for
  it is fifteen years since he published under the title of _Flore
  Française_ the history and description of the plants of France, with
  the mention of their properties and of their usefulness in the arts;
  a work printed at the expense of the government, well received by
  the public, and which now is much sought after and very rare." He
  then describes his second great botanical undertaking, the
  _Encyclopædia and Illustration of Genera_, with nine hundred plates.
  He states that for ten years past he has kept busy "a great number
  of Parisian artists, three printing presses for different works,
  besides delivering a course of lectures."

The petition was granted. At about this period a pension of twelve
hundred francs from the Academy of Sciences, and which had increased to
three thousand francs, had ceased eighteen months previously to be paid
to him. But at the time (an II.) Lamarck was "chargé de sept enfans,"
and this appropriation was a most welcome addition to his small salary.

The next year (an III.) he again applied for a similar allowance from
the funds providing an indemnity for men of letters and artists "whose
talents are useful to the Republic." Again referring to the _Flore
Française_, and his desire to prepare a second edition of it, and his
other works and travels in the interest of botanical science, he says:

  "If I had been less overburdened by needs of all kinds for some
  years, and especially since the suppression of my pension from the
  aforesaid Academy of Sciences, I should prepare the second edition
  of this useful work; and this would be, without doubt, indeed, the
  opportunity of making a new present to my country.

  "Since my return to France I have worked on the completion of my
  great botanical enterprises, and indeed for about ten years past my
  works have obliged me to keep in constant activity a great number of
  artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers. But these
  important works that I have begun, and have in a well-advanced
  state, have been in spite of all my efforts suspended and
  practically abandoned for the last ten years. The loss of my pension
  from the Academy of Sciences and the enormous increase in the price
  of articles of subsistence have placed me, with my numerous family,
  in a state of distress which leaves me neither the time nor the
  freedom from care to cultivate science in a fruitful way."

Lamarck's collection of shells, the accumulation of nearly thirty
years,[38] was purchased by the government at the price of five thousand
livres. This sum was used by him to balance the price of a national
estate for which he had contracted by virtue of the law of 28 ventôse de
l'an IV.[39] This little estate, which was the old domain of Beauregard,
was a modest farm-house or country-house at Héricourt-Saint-Samson, in
the Department of Seine-et-Oise, not far to the northward of Beauvais,
and about fifty miles from Paris. It is probable that as a proprietor of
a landed property he passed the summer season, or a part of it, on this
estate.

This request was, we may believe, made from no unworthy or mercenary
motive, but because he thought that such an indemnity was his due. Some
years after (in 1809) the chair of zoölogy, newly formed by the Faculté
des Sciences in Paris, was offered to him. Desirable as the salary would
have been in his straitened circumstances, he modestly refused the
offer, because he felt unable at that time of life (he was, however, but
sixty-five years of age) to make the studies required worthily to occupy
the position.

One of Lamarck's projects, which he was never able to carry out, for it
was even then quite beyond the powers of any man single-handed to
undertake, was his _Système de la Nature_. We will let him describe it
in his own words, especially since the account is somewhat
autobiographical. It is the second memoir he addressed to the Committee
of Public Instruction of the National Convention, dated 4 vendémiaire,
l'an III. (1795):

  "In my first memoir I have given you an account of the works which I
  have published and of those which I have undertaken to contribute to
  the progress of natural history; also of the travels and researches
  which I have made.

  "But for a long time I have had in view a very important
  work--perhaps better adapted for education in France than those I
  have already composed or undertaken--a work, in short, which the
  National Convention should without doubt order, and of which no part
  could be written so advantageously as in Paris, where are to be
  found abundant means for carrying it to completion.

  "This is a _Système de la Nature_, a work analogous to the _Systema
  naturæ_ of Linnæus, but written in French, and presenting the
  picture complete, concise, and methodical, of all the natural
  productions observed up to this day. This important work (of
  Linnæus), which the young Frenchmen who intend to devote themselves
  to the study of natural history always require, is the object of
  speculations by foreign authors, and has already passed through
  thirteen different editions. Moreover, their works, which, to our
  shame, we have to use, because we have none written expressly for
  us, are filled (especially the last edition edited by Gmelin) with
  gross mistakes, omissions of double and triple occurrence, and
  errors in synonymy, and present many generic characters which are
  inexact or imperceptible and many series badly divided, or genera
  too numerous in species, and difficulties insurmountable to
  students.

  "If the Committee of Public Instruction had the time to devote any
  attention to the importance of my project, to the utility of
  publishing such a work, and perhaps to the duty prescribed by the
  national honor, I would say to it that, after having for a long time
  reflected and meditated and determined upon the most feasible plan,
  finally after having seen amassed and prepared the most essential
  materials, I offer to put this beautiful project into execution. I
  have not lost sight of the difficulties of this great enterprise. I
  am, I believe, as well aware of them, and better, than any one else;
  but I feel that I can overcome them without descending to a simple
  and dishonorable compilation of what foreigners have written on the
  subject. I have some strength left to sacrifice for the common
  advantage; I have had some experience and practice in writing works
  of this kind; my herbarium is one of the richest in existence; my
  numerous collection of shells is almost the only one in France the
  specimens of which are determined and named according to the method
  adopted by modern naturalists--finally, I am in a position to profit
  by all the aid which is to be found in the National Museum of
  Natural History. With these means brought together, I can then hope
  to prepare in a suitable manner this interesting work.

  "I had at first thought that the work should be executed by a
  society of naturalists; but after having given this idea much
  thought, and having already the example of the new encyclopædia, I
  am convinced that in such a case the work would be very defective in
  arrangement, without unity or plan, without any harmony of
  principles, and that its composition might be interminable.

  "Written with the greatest possible conciseness, this work could not
  be comprised in less than eight volumes in 8vo, namely: One volume
  for the quadrupeds and birds; one volume for the reptiles and
  fishes; two volumes for the insects; one volume for the worms (the
  molluscs, madrepores, lithophytes, and naked worms); two volumes for
  the plants; one volume for the minerals: eight volumes in all.

  "It is impossible to prepare in France a work of this nature without
  having special aid from the nation, because the expense of printing
  (on account of the enormous quantity of citations and figures which
  it would contain) would be such that any arrangement with the
  printer or the manager of the edition could not remunerate the
  author for writing such an immense work.

  "If the nation should wish to print the work at its own expense, and
  then give to the author the profits of the sale of this edition,
  the author would be very much pleased, and would doubtless not
  expect any further aid. But it would cost the nation a great deal,
  and I believe that this useful project could be carried through with
  greater economy.

  "Indeed, if the nation will give me twenty thousand francs, in a
  single payment, I will take the whole responsibility, and I agree,
  if I live, that before the expiration of seven years the _Système de
  la Nature_ in French, with the complemental addition, the
  corrections, and the convenient explanations, shall be at the
  disposition of all those who love or study natural history."


FOOTNOTES:

[32] Most men of science of the Revolution, like Monge and others, were
advanced republicans, and the Chevalier Lamarck, though of noble birth,
was perhaps not without sympathy with the ideas which led to the
establishment of the republic. It is possible that in his walks and
intercourse with Rousseau he may have been inspired with the new notions
of liberty and equality first promulgated by that philosopher.

His studies and meditations were probably not interrupted by the events
of the Terror. Stevens, in his history of the French Revolution, tells
us that Paris was never gayer than in the summer of 1793, and that
during the Reign of Terror the restaurants, _cafés_, and theatres were
always full. There were never more theatres open at the same period than
then, though no single great play or opera was produced. Meanwhile the
great painter David at this time built up a school of art and made that
city a centre for art students. Indeed the Revolution was "a grand time
for enthusiastic young men," while people in general lived their
ordinary lives. There is little doubt, then, that the savants, except
the few who were occupied by their duties as members of the _Convention
Nationale_, worked away quietly at their specialties, each in his own
study or laboratory or lecture-room.

[33] Bern. Germ. Étienne, Comte de Lacépède, born in 1756, died in 1825,
was elected professor of the zoölogy of "quadrupedes ovipares, reptiles,
et poissons," January 12, 1795 (Records of the Museum). He was the
author of works on amphibia, reptiles, and mammals, forming
continuations of Buffon's _Histoire Naturelle_. He also published
_Histoire Naturelle des Poissons_ (1798-1803), _Histoire des Cétacés_
(1804), and _Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme_ (1827), _Les Ages de la
Nature et Histoire de l'Espèce Humaine_, tome 2, 1830.

[34] Perrier, _l. c._, p. 14.

[35] _Fragments Biographiques_, p. 214.

[36] _Fragments Biographiques_, p. 213.

[37] A few years ago, when we formed the plan of writing his life, we
wrote to friends in Paris for information as to the exact house in which
Lamarck lived, and received the answer that it was unknown; another
proof of the neglect and forgetfulness that had followed Lamarck so many
years after his death, and which was even manifested before he died.
Afterwards Professor Giard kindly wrote that by reference to the _procès
verbaux_ of the Assembly, it had been found by Professor Hamy that he
had lived in the house of Buffon.

The house is situated at the corner of Rue de Buffon and Rue Geoffroy
St. Hilaire. The courtyard facing Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire bears the
number 2 Rue de Buffon, and is in the angle between the Galerie de
Zoologie and the Bibliothèque. The edifice is a large four-storied one.
Lamarck occupied the second _étage_, what we should call the third
story; it was first occupied by Buffon. His bedroom, where he died, was
on the _premier étage_. It was tenanted by De Quatrefages in his time,
and is at present occupied by Professor G. T. Hamy; Professor L.
Vaillant living in the first _étage_, or second story, and Dr. J.
Deniker, the _bibliothécaire_ and learned anthropologist, in the third.
The second _étage_ was, about fifty years ago (1840-50), renovated for
the use of Fremy the chemist, so that the exact room occupied by Lamarck
as a study cannot be identified.

This ancient house was originally called _La Croix de Fer_, and was
built about two centuries before the foundation of the Jardin du Roi. It
appears from an inspection of the notes on the titles and copies of the
original deeds, preserved in the Archives, and kindly shown me by
Professor G. T. Hamy, the Archivist of the Museum, that this house was
erected in 1468, the deed being dated _1xbre_, 1468. The house is
referred to as _maison ditte La Croix de Fer_ in deeds of 1684, 1755,
and 1768. It was sold by Charles Roger to M. le Compte de Buffon,
March 23, 1771. One of the old gardens overlooked by it was called _de
Jardin de la Croix_. It was originally the first structure erected on
the south side of the Jardin du Roi.

[38] In the "avertissement" to his _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_
(1801), after stating that he had at his disposition the magnificent
collection of invertebrate animals of the museum, he refers to his
private collection as follows: "Et une autre assez riche que j'ai formée
moi-même par près de trente années de recherches," p. vii. Afterwards he
formed another collection of shells named according to his system, and
containing a part of the types described in his _Histoire Naturelle des
Animaux sans Vertèbres_ and in his minor articles. This collection the
government did not acquire, and it is now in the museum at Geneva. The
Paris museum, however, possesses a good many of the Lamarckian types,
which are on exhibition (Perrier, _l. c._, p. 20).

[39] _Lettre du Ministre des Finances (de Ramel) au Ministre de
l'Intérieur_ (13 pr. an V.). See Perrier, _l. c._, p. 20.




CHAPTER V

LAST DAYS AND DEATH


Lamarck's life was saddened and embittered by the loss of four wives,
and the pangs of losing three of his children;[40] also by the rigid
economy he had to practise and the unending poverty of his whole
existence. A very heavy blow to him and to science was the loss, at an
advanced age, of his eyesight.

It was, apparently, not a sudden attack of blindness, for we have hints
that at times he had to call in Latreille and others to aid him in the
study of the insects. The continuous use of the magnifying lens and the
microscope, probably, was the cause of enfeebled eyesight, resulting in
complete loss of vision. Duval[41] states that he passed the last ten
years of his life in darkness; that his loss of sight gradually came on
until he became completely blind.

In the reports of the meetings of the Board of Professors there is but
one reference to his blindness. Previous to this we find that, at his
last appearance at these sessions--_i.e._, April 19, 1825--since his
condition did not permit him to give his course of lectures, he had
asked M. Latreille to fill his place; but such was the latter's health,
he proposed that M. Audouin, sub-librarian of the French Institute,
should lecture in his stead, on the invertebrate animals. This was
agreed to.

The next reference, and the only explicit one, is that in the records
for May 23, 1826, as follows: "Vu la cécité dont M. de Lamarck est
frappé, M. Bosc[42] continuera d'exercer sur les parties confiert à
M. Audouin la surveillance attribuée au Professeur."

But, according to Duval, long before this he had been unable to use his
eyes. In his _Système analytique des Connaissances positives de
l'Homme_, published in 1820, he refers to the sudden loss of his
eyesight.

Even in advanced life Lamarck seems not to have suffered from
ill-health, despite the fact that he apparently during the last thirty
years of his life lived in a very secluded way. Whether he went out into
the world, to the theatre, or even went away from Paris and the Museum
into the country in his later years, is a matter of doubt. It is said
that he was fond of novels, his daughters reading to him those of the
best French authors. After looking with some care through the records of
the sessions of the Assembly of Professors, we are struck with the
evidences of his devotion to routine museum work and to his courses of
lectures.

At that time the Museum sent out to the _Écoles centrales_ of the
different departments of France named collections made up from the
duplicates, and in this sort of drudgery Lamarck took an active part. He
also took a prominent share in the business of the Museum, in the
exchange and in the purchase of specimens and collections in his
department, and even in the management of the menagerie. Thus he
reported on the dentition of the young lions (one dying from teething),
on the illness and recovery of one of the elephants, on the generations
of goats and kids in the park; also on a small-sized bull born of a
small cow covered by a Scottish bull, the young animal having, as he
states, all the characters of the original.

For one year (1794) he was secretary of the Board of Professors of the
Museum.[43] The records of the meetings from 4 vendémiaire, l'an III.,
until 4 vendémiaire, l'an IV., are each written in his bold, legible
handwriting or signed by him. He signed his name _Lamarck_, this period
being that of the first republic. Afterwards, in the records, his name
is written _De Lamarck_. He was succeeded by É. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
who signed himself plain _Geoffroy_.

In 1802 he acted as treasurer of the Assembly, and again for a period of
six years, until and including 1811, when he resigned, the reason given
being: "Il s'occupe depuis six ans et que ses travaux et son age lui
rendent penibles."

Lamarck was extremely regular in his attendance at these meetings. From
1793 until 1818 he rarely, if ever, missed a meeting. We have only
observed in the records of this long period the absence of his name on
two or three occasions from the list of those present. During 1818 and
the following year it was his blindness which probably prevented his
regular attendance. July 15, 1818, he was present, and presented the
fifth volume of his _Animaux sans Vertèbres_; and August 31, 1819, he
was present[44] and laid before the Assembly the sixth volume of the
same great work.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK, WHEN OLD AND BLIND, IN THE COSTUME
OF A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE, ENGRAVED IN 1824.]

From the observations of the records we infer that Lamarck never had
any long, lingering illness or suffered from overwork, though his life
had little sunshine or playtime in it. He must have had a strong
constitution, his only infirmity being the terrible one (especially to
an observer of nature) of total blindness.

Lamarck's greatest work in systematic zoölogy would never have been
completed had it not been for the self-sacrificing spirit and devotion
of his eldest daughter.

A part of the sixth and the whole of the last volume of the _Animaux
sans Vertèbres_ were presented to the Assembly of Professors
September 10, 1822. This volume was dictated to and written out by one
of his daughters, Mlle. Cornelie De Lamarck. On her the aged savant
leaned during the last ten years of his life--those years of failing
strength and of blindness finally becoming total. The frail woman
accompanied him in his hours of exercise, and when he was confined to
his house she never left him. It is stated by Cuvier, in his eulogy,
that at her first walk out of doors after the end came she was nearly
overcome by the fresh air, to which she had become so unaccustomed. She,
indeed, practically sacrificed her life to her father. It is one of the
rarest and most striking instances of filial devotion known in the
annals of science or literature, and is a noticeable contrast to the
daughters of the blind Milton, whose domestic life was rendered unhappy
by their undutifulness, as they were impatient of the restraint and
labors his blindness had imposed upon them.

Besides this, the seventh volume is a voluminous scientific work, filled
with very dry special details, making the labor of writing out from
dictation, of corrections and preparation for the press, most wearisome
and exhausting, to say nothing of the corrections of the proof-sheets, a
task which probably fell to her--work enough to break down the health of
a strong man.

It was a natural and becoming thing for the Assembly of Professors of
the Museum, in view of the "malheureuse position de la famille," to vote
to give her employment in the botanical laboratory in arranging and
pasting the dried plants, with a salary of 1,000 francs.

Of the last illness of Lamarck, and the nature of the sickness to which
he finally succumbed, there is no account. It is probable that,
enfeebled by the weakness of extreme old age, he gradually sank away
without suffering from any acute disease.

The exact date of his death has been ascertained by Dr. Mondière,[45]
with the aid of M. Saint-Joanny, archiviste du Dèpartment de la Seine,
who made special search for the record. The "acte" states that
December 28, 1829, Lamarck, then a widower, died in the Jardin du Roi,
at the age of eighty-five years.

The obsequies, as stated in the _Moniteur Universel_ of Paris for
December 23, 1829, were celebrated on the Sunday previous in the Church
of Saint-Médard, his parish. From the church the remains were borne to
the cemetery of Montparnasse. At the interment, which took place
December 30, M. Latreille, in the name of the Academy of Sciences, and
M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the name and on behalf of his colleagues,
the Professors of the Museum of Natural History, pronounced eulogies at
the grave. The eulogy prepared by Cuvier, and published after his death,
was read at a session of the Academy of Sciences, by Baron Silvestre,
November 26, 1832.

With the exception of these formalities, the great French naturalist,
"the Linné of France," was buried as one forgotten and unknown. We read
with astonishment, in the account by Dr. A. Mondière, who made zealous
inquiries for the exact site of the grave of Lamarck, that it is and
forever will be unknown. It is a sad and discreditable, and to us
inexplicable, fact that his remains did not receive decent burial. They
were not even deposited in a separate grave, but were thrown into a
trench apparently situated apart from the other graves, and from which
the bones of those thrown there were removed every five years. They are
probably now in the catacombs of Paris, mingled with those of the
thousands of unknown or paupers in that great ossuary.[46]

Dr. Mondière's account is as follows. Having found in the _Moniteur_ the
notice of the burial services, as above stated, he goes on to say:

  "Armed with this document, I went again to the cemetery of
  Montparnasse, where I fortunately found a conservator, M. Lacave,
  who is entirely _au courant_ with the question of transformism. He
  therefore interested himself in my inquiries, and, thanks to him, I
  have been able to determine exactly where Lamarck had been buried. I
  say had been, because, alas! he had been simply placed in a _trench
  off on one side_ (_fosse à part_), that is to say, one which should
  change its occupant at the end of five years. Was it negligence, was
  it the jealousy of his colleagues, was it the result of the troubles
  of 1830? In brief, there had been no permission granted to purchase
  a burial lot. The bones of Lamarck are probably at this moment mixed
  with those of all the other unknown which lie there. What had at
  first led us into an error is that we made the inquiries under the
  name of Lamarck instead of that of de Monnet. In reality, the
  register of inscription bears the following mention:

  "'De Monnet de Lamarck buried this 20 December 1829 (85 years), 3d
  square, 1st division, 2d line, trench 22.'

  "At some period later, a friendly hand, without doubt, had written
  on the margin of the register the following information:

  "'To the left of M. Dassas.'

  "M. Lacave kindly went with us to search for the place where Lamarck
  had been interred, and on the register we saw this:

  "'Dassas, 1st division, 4th line south, No. 6 to the west,
  concession 1165-1829.' On arriving at the spot designated, we found
  some new graves, but nothing to indicate that of M. Dassas, our only
  mark by which we could trace the site after the changes wrought
  since 1829. After several ineffectual attempts, I finally perceived
  a flat grave, surrounded by an iron railing, and covered with weeds.
  Its surface seemed to me very regular, and I probed this lot. There
  was a gravestone there. The grave-digger who accompanied us cleared
  away the surface, and I confess that it was with the greatest
  pleasure and with deep emotion that we read the name Dassas.

[Illustration: POSITION OF THE BURIAL PLACE OF LAMARCK IN THE CEMETERY
OF MONTPARNASSE.]

  "We found the place, but unfortunately, as I have previously said,
  the remains of Lamarck are no longer there."

Mondière added to his letter a little plan (p. 59), which he drew on the
spot.[47]

But the life-work of Lamarck and his theory of organic evolution, as
well as the lessons of his simple and noble character, are more durable
and lasting than any monument of stone or brass. His name will never be
forgotten either by his own countrymen or by the world of science and
philosophy. After the lapse of nearly a hundred years, and in this first
year of the twentieth century, his views have taken root and flourished
with a surprising strength and vigor, and his name is preëminent among
the naturalists of his time.

No monument exists in Montparnasse, but within the last decade, though
the reparation has come tardily, the bust of Lamarck may be seen by
visitors to the Jardin des Plantes, on the outer wall of the Nouvelle
Galerie, containing the Museums of Comparative Anatomy, Palæontology,
and Anthropology.

Although the city of Paris has not yet erected a monument to its
greatest naturalist, some public recognition of his eminent services to
the city and nation was manifested when the Municipal Council of Paris,
on February 10, 1875, gave the name Lamarck to a street.[48] This is a
long and not unimportant street on the hill of Montmartre in the XVIII^e
_arrondissement_, and in the zone of the old stone or gypsum quarries
which existed before Paris extended so far out in that direction, and
from which were taken the fossil remains of the early tertiary mammals
described by Cuvier.

The city of Toulouse has also honored itself by naming one of its
streets after Lamarck; this was due to the proposal of Professor Émile
Cartailhac to the Municipal Council, which voted to this effect May 12,
1886.

In the meetings of the Assembly of Professors no one took the trouble to
prepare and enter minutes, however brief and formal, relative to his
decease. The death of Lamarck is not even referred to in the
_Procès-verbaux_. This is the more marked because there is an entry in
the same records for 1829, and about the same date, of an extraordinary
_séance_ held November 19, 1829, when "the Assembly" was convoked to
take measures regarding the death of Professor Vauquelin relative to the
choice of a candidate, Chevreul being elected to fill his chair.

Lamarck's chair was at his death divided, and the two professorships
thus formed were given to Latreille and De Blainville.

At the session of the Assembly of Professors held December 8, 1829,
Geoffroy St. Hilaire sent in a letter to the Assembly urging that the
department of invertebrate animals be divided into two, and referred to
the bad state of preservation of the insects, the force of assistants to
care for these being insufficient. He also, in his usual tactful way,
referred to the "_complaisance extrème de la parte de M. De Lamarck_" in
1793, in assenting to the reunion in a single professorship of the mass
of animals then called "_insectes et vermes_."

The two successors of the chair held by Lamarck were certainly not
dilatory in asking for appointments. At a session of the Professors held
December 22, 1829, the first meeting after his death, we find the
following entry: "M. Latreille écrit pour exprimer son désir d'être
présenté comme candidat à la chaire vacante par le décès de M. Lamarck
et pour rappeler ses titres à cette place."

M. de Blainville also wrote in the same manner: "Dans le cas que la
chaire serait divisée, il demande la place de Professeur de l'histoire
des animaux inarticulés. Dans le cas contraire il se présente également
comme candidat, voulant, tout en respectant les droits acquis, ne pas
laisser dans l'oubli ceux qui lui appartiennent."

January 12, 1830, Latreille[49] was unanimously elected by the Assembly
a candidate to the chair of entomology, and at a following session
(February 16th) De Blainville was unanimously elected a candidate for
the chair of _Molluscs, Vers et Zoophytes_, and on the 16th of March the
royal ordinance confirming those elections was received by the Assembly.

There could have been no fitter appointments made for those two
positions. Lamarck had long known Latreille "and loved him as a son." De
Blainville honored and respected Lamarck, and fully appreciated his
commanding abilities as an observer and thinker.


FOOTNOTES:

[40] I have been unable to ascertain the names of any of his wives, or
of his children, except his daughter, Cornelie.

[41] "L'examen minutieux de petits animaux, analysés à l'aide
d'instruments grossissants, fatigua, puis affaiblait, sa vue. Bientôt il
fut complement aveugle. Il passa les dix derniers années de sa vie
plongé dans les ténèbres, entouré des soins de ses deux tilles, à l'une
desquelles il dictait le dernier volume de son _Histoire des Animaux
sans Vertèbres_."--_Le Transformiste Lamarck_, _Bull. Soc.
Anthropologie_, xii., 1889, p. 341. Cuvier, also, in his history of the
progress of natural science for 1819, remarks: "M. de La Marck, malgré
l'affoiblissement total de sa vue, poursuit avec un courage inaltérable
la continuation de son grand ouvrage sur les animaux sans vertèbres"
(p. 406).

[42] Louis Auguste Guillaume Bosc, born in Paris, 1759; died in 1828.
Author of now unimportant works, entitled: _Histoire Naturelle des
Coquilles_ (1801); _Hist. Nat. des Vers_ (1802); _Hist. Nat. des
Crustacés_ (1828), and papers on insects and plants. He was associated
with Lamarck in the publication of the _Journal d'Histoire Naturelle_.
During the Reign of Terror in 1793 he was a friend of Madame Roland, was
arrested, but afterwards set free and placed first on the Directory in
1795. In 1798 he sailed for Charleston, S. C. Nominated successively
vice-consul at Wilmington and consul at New York, but not obtaining his
exequatur from President Adams, he went to live with the botanist
Michaux in Carolina in his botanical garden, where he devoted himself to
natural history until the quarrel in 1800 between the United States and
France caused him to return to France. On his return he sent North
American insects to his friends Fabricius and Olivier, fishes to
Lacépède, birds to Daudin, reptiles to Latreille. Not giving all his
time to public life, he devoted himself to natural history,
horticulture, and agriculture, succeeding Thouin in the chair of
horticulture, where he was most usefully employed until his
death.--(Cuvier's _Éloge_.)

[43] The first director of the Board or Assembly of
Professors-administrative of the Museum was Daubenton, Lacépède being
the secretary, Thouin the treasurer. Daubenton was succeeded by Jussieu;
and Lacépède, first by Desfontaines and afterwards by Lamarck, who was
elected secretary 18 fructidor, an II. (1794).

[44] His attendance this year was infrequent. July 10, 1820, he was
present and made a report relative to madrepores and molluscs. In the
summer of 1821 he attended several of the meetings. August 7, 1821, he
was present, and referred to the collection of shells of Struthiolaria.
He was present May 23d and June 9th, when it was voted that he should
enjoy the garden of the house he occupied and that a chamber should be
added to his lodgings. He was frequent in attendance this year,
especially during the summer months. He attended a few meetings at
intervals in 1822, 1823, and only twice in 1824.

At a meeting held April 19, 1825, he was present, and, stating that his
condition did not permit him to lecture, asked to have Audouin take his
place, as Latreille's health did not allow him to take up the work. The
next week (26th) he was likewise present. On May 10 he was present, as
also on June 28, October 11, and also through December, 1825. His last
appearance at these business meetings was on July 11, 1828.

[45] See, for the _Acte de décès_, _L'Homme_, iv. p. 289, and _Lamarck.
Par un Groupe de Transformistes_, etc., p. 24.

[46] Dr. Mondière in _L'Homme_, iv. p. 291, and _Lamarck. Par un Groupe
de Transformistes_, p. 271. A somewhat parallel case is that of Mozart,
who was buried at Vienna in the common ground of St. Marx, the exact
position of his grave being unknown. There were no ceremonies at his
grave, and even his friends followed him no farther than the city gates,
owing to a violent storm.--(_The Century Cyclopedia of Names._)

[47] Still hoping that the site of the grave might have been kept open,
and desiring to satisfy myself as to whether there was possibly space
enough left on which to erect a modest monument to the memory of
Lamarck, I took with me the _brochure_ containing the letter and plan of
Dr. Mondière to the cemetery of Montparnasse. With the aid of one of the
officials I found what he told me was the site, but the entire place was
densely covered with the tombs and grave-stones of later interments,
rendering the erection of a stone, however small and simple, quite out
of the question.

[48] The Rue Lamarck begins at the elevated square on which is situated
the Church of the Sacré-Coeur, now in process of erection, and from this
point one obtains a commanding and very fine view overlooking the city;
from there the street curves round to the westward, ending in the Avenue
de Saint-Ouen, and continues as a wide and long thoroughfare, ending to
the north of the cemetery of Montmartre. A neighboring street, Rue
Becquerel, is named after another French savant, and parallel to it is a
short street named Rue Darwin.

[49] Latreille was born at Brives, November 29, 1762, and died
February 6, 1833. He was the leading entomologist of his time, and to
him Cuvier was indebted for the arrangement of the insects in the _Règne
Animal_. His bust is to be seen on the same side of the Nouvelle Galerie
in the Jardin des Plantes as those of Lamarck, Cuvier, De Blainville,
and D'Orbigny. His first paper was introduced by Lamarck in 1792. In the
minutes of the session of 4 thermidor, l'an VI. (July, 1798), we find
this entry: "The citizen Lamarck announces that the citizen Latreille
offered to the administration to work under the direction of that
professor in arranging the very numerous collection of insects of the
Museum, so as to place them under the eye of the public." And here he
remained until his appointment. Several years (1825) before Lamarck's
death he had asked to have Latreille fill his place in giving
instruction.

Audouin (1797-1841), also an eminent entomologist and morphologist, was
appointed _aide-naturaliste-adjoint_ in charge of Mollusca, Crustacea,
Worms, and Zoöphytes. He was afterwards associated with H. Milne Edwards
in works on annelid worms. December 26, 1827, Latreille asked to be
allowed to employ Boisduval as a _préparateur_; he became the author of
several works on injurious insects and Lepidoptera.




CHAPTER VI

POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND
SOME LATER BIOLOGISTS


De Blainville, a worthy successor of Lamarck, in his posthumous book,
_Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_, pays the highest tribute to his
predecessor, whose position as the leading naturalist of his time he
fully and gratefully acknowledges, saying: "Among the men whose lectures
I have had the advantage of hearing, I truly recognize only three
masters, M. de Lamarck, M. Claude Richard, and M. Pinel" (p. 43). He
also speaks of wishing to write the scientific biographies of Cuvier and
De Lamarck, the two zoölogists of this epoch whose lectures he most
frequently attended and whose writings he studied, and "who have
exercised the greatest influence on the zoölogy of our time" (p. 42).
Likewise in the opening words of the preface he refers to the rank taken
by Lamarck:

  "The aim which I have proposed to myself in my course on the
  principles of zoölogy demonstrated by the history of its progress
  from Aristotle to our time, and consequently the plan which I have
  followed to attain this aim, have very naturally led me, so to
  speak, in spite of myself, to signalize in M. de Lamarck the
  expression of one of those phases through which the science of
  organization has to pass in order to arrive at its last term before
  showing its true aim. From my point of view this phase does not seem
  to me to have been represented by any other naturalist of our time,
  whatever may have been the reputation which he made during his
  life."

He then refers to the estimation in which Lamarck was held by Auguste
Comte, who, in his _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, has anticipated and
even surpassed himself in the high esteem he felt for "the celebrated
author of the _Philosophie Zoologique_."

The eulogy by Cuvier, which gives most fully the details of the early
life of Lamarck, and which has been the basis for all the subsequent
biographical sketches, was unworthy of him. Lamarck had, with his
customary self-abnegation and generosity, aided and favored the young
Cuvier in the beginning of his career,[50] who in his _Règne Animal_
adopted the classes founded by Lamarck. Thoroughly convinced of the
erroneous views of Cuvier in regard to cataclysms, he criticised and
opposed them in his writings in a courteous and proper way without
directly mentioning Cuvier by name or entering into any public debate
with him.

When the hour came for the great comparative anatomist and
palæontologist, from his exalted position, to prepare a tribute to the
memory of a naturalist of equal merit and of a far more thoughtful and
profound spirit, to be read before the French Academy of Sciences, what
a eulogy it was--as De Blainville exclaims, _et quel éloge_! It was not
printed until after Cuvier's death, and then, it is stated, portions
were omitted as not suitable for publication.[51] This is, we believe,
the only stain on Cuvier's life, and it was unworthy of the great man.
In this _éloge_, so different in tone from the many others which are
collected in the three volumes of Cuvier's eulogies, he indiscriminately
ridicules all of Lamarck's theories. Whatever may have been his
condemnation of Lamarck's essays on physical and chemical subjects, he
might have been more reserved and less dogmatic and sarcastic in his
estimate of what he supposed to be the value of Lamarck's views on
evolution. It was Cuvier's adverse criticisms and ridicule and his
anti-evolutional views which, more than any other single cause, retarded
the progress of biological science and the adoption of a working theory
of evolution for which the world had to wait half a century.

It even appears that Lamarck was in part instrumental in inducing Cuvier
in 1795 to go to Paris from Normandy, and become connected with the
Museum. De Blainville relates that the Abbé Tessier met the young
zoölogist at Valmont near Fécamp, and wrote to Geoffroy that "he had
just discovered in Normandy a pearl," and invited him to do what he
could to induce Cuvier to come to Paris. "I made," said Geoffroy, "the
proposition to my _confrères_, but I was supported, and only feebly, by
M. de Lamarck, who slightly knew M. Cuvier as the author of a memoir on
entomology."

The eulogy pronounced by Geoffroy St. Hilaire over the remains of his
old friend and colleague was generous, sympathetic, and heartfelt.

  "Yes [he said, in his eloquent way], for us who knew M. de Lamarck,
  whom his counsels have guided, whom we have found always
  indefatigable, devoted, occupied so willingly with the most
  difficult labors, we shall not fear to say that such a loss leaves
  in our ranks an immense void. From the blessings of such a life, so
  rich in instructive lessons, so remarkable for the most generous
  self-abnegation, it is difficult to choose.

  "A man of vigorous, profound ideas, and very often admirably
  generalized, Lamarck conceived them with a view to the public good.
  If he met, as often happened, with great opposition, he spoke of it
  as a condition imposed on every one who begins a reform. Moreover,
  the great age, the infirmities, but especially the grievous
  blindness of M. de Lamarck had reserved for him another lot. This
  great and strong mind could enjoy some consolation in knowing the
  judgment of posterity, which for him began in his own lifetime. When
  his last tedious days, useless to science, had arrived, when he had
  ceased to be subjected to rivalry, envy and passion became
  extinguished and justice alone remained. De Lamarck then heard
  impartial voices, the anticipated echo of posterity, which would
  judge him as history will judge him. Yes, the scientific world has
  pronounced its judgment in giving him the name of 'the French
  Linné,' thus linking together the two men who have both merited a
  triple crown by their works on general natural history, zoölogy and
  botany, and whose names, increasing in fame from age to age, will
  both be handed down to the remotest posterity."[52]

Also in his _Études sur la Vie, les Ouvrages, et les Doctrines de
Buffon_ (1838), Geoffroy again, with much warmth of affection, says:

  "Attacked on all sides, injured likewise by odious ridicule,
  Lamarck, too indignant to answer these cutting epigrams, submitted
  to the indignity with a sorrowful patience.... Lamarck lived a long
  while poor, blind, and forsaken, but not by me; I shall ever love
  and venerate him."[53]

The following evidently heartfelt and sincere tribute to his memory,
showing warm esteem and thorough respect for Lamarck, and also a
confident feeling that his lasting fame was secure, is to be found in an
obscure little book[54] containing satirical, humorous, but perhaps not
always fair or just, characterizations and squibs concerning the
professors and aid-naturalists of the Jardin des Plantes.

  "What head will not be uncovered on hearing pronounced the name of
  the man whose genius was ignored and who languished steeped in
  bitterness. Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone with a glory
  of whose extent he himself was conscious, but which only the coming
  ages will sanction, when shall be revealed more clearly the laws of
  organization.

  "Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is better
  than the ephemeral glory of men who only maintain their reputation
  by sharing in the errors of their time.

  "Honor to thee! Respect to thy memory! Thou hast died in the breach
  while fighting for truth, and the truth assures thee immortality."

Lamarck's theoretical views were not known in Germany until many years
after his death. Had Goethe, his contemporary (1749-1832), known of
them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his speculations, have
expressed his appreciation of them, and Lamarck's reputation would, in
his own lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his later years
at Paris.

Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, came from Ernst
Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive works have been so widely read. In
his _History of Creation_ (1868) he thus estimates Lamarck's work as a
philosopher:

  "To him will always belong the immortal glory of having for the
  first time worked out the theory of descent, as an independent
  scientific theory of the first order, and as the philosophical
  foundation of the whole science of biology."

Referring to the _Philosophie Zoologique_, he says:

  "This admirable work is the first connected exposition of the theory
  of descent carried out strictly into all its consequences. By its
  purely mechanical method of viewing organic nature, and the strictly
  philosophical proofs brought forward in it, Lamarck's work is raised
  far above the prevailing dualistic views of his time; and with the
  exception of Darwin's work, which appeared just half a century
  later, we know of none which we could, in this respect, place by the
  side of the _Philosophie Zoologique_. How far it was in advance of
  its time is perhaps best seen from the circumstance that it was not
  understood by most men, and for fifty years was not spoken of at
  all. Cuvier, Lamarck's greatest opponent, in his _Report on the
  Progress of Natural Science_, in which the most unimportant
  anatomical investigations are enumerated, does not devote a single
  word to this work, which forms an epoch in science. Goethe, also,
  who took such a lively interest in the French nature-philosophy and
  in the 'thoughts of kindred minds beyond the Rhine,' nowhere
  mentions Lamarck, and does not seem to have known the _Philosophie
  Zoologique_ at all."

Again in 1882 Haeckel writes:[55]

  "We regard it as a truly tragic fact that the _Philosophie
  Zoologique_ of Lamarck, one of the greatest productions of the great
  literary period of the beginning of our century, received at first
  only the slightest notice, and within a few years became wholly
  forgotten.... Not until fully fifty years later, when Darwin
  breathed new life into the transformation views founded therein, was
  the buried treasure again recovered, and we cannot refrain from
  regarding it as the most complete presentation of the development
  theory before Darwin.

  "While Lamarck clearly expressed all the essential fundamental ideas
  of our present doctrine of descent; and excites our admiration at
  the depth of his morphological knowledge, he none the less surprises
  us by the prophetic (_vorausschauende_) clearness of his
  physiological conceptions."

In his views on life, the nature of the will and reason, and other
subjects, Haeckel declares that Lamarck was far above most of his
contemporaries, and that he sketched out a programme of the biology of
the future which was not carried out until our day.

J. Victor Carus[56] also claims for Lamarck "the lasting merit of having
been the first to have placed the theory (of descent) on a scientific
foundation."

The best, most catholic, and just exposition of Lamarck's views, and
which is still worth reading, is that by Lyell Chapters XXXIV.-XXXVI. of
his _Principles of Geology_, 1830, and though at that time one would not
look for an acceptance of views which then seemed extraordinary and,
indeed, far-fetched, Lyell had no words of satire and ridicule, only a
calm, able statement and discussion of his principles. Indeed, it is
well known that when, in after years, his friend Charles Darwin
published his views, Lyell expressed some leaning towards the older
speculations of Lamarck.

Lyell's opinions as to the interest and value of Lamarck's ideas may be
found in his _Life and Letters_, and also in the _Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin_. In the chapter, _On the Reception of the Origin of
Species_, by Huxley, are the following extracts from Lyell's _Letters_
(ii., pp. 179-204). In a letter addressed to Mantell (dated March 2,
1827), Lyell speaks of having just read Lamarck; he expresses his
delight at Lamarck's theories, and his personal freedom from any
objections based on theological grounds. And though he is evidently
alarmed at the pithecoid origin of man involved in Lamarck's doctrine,
he observes: "But, after all, what changes species may really undergo!
How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line beyond
which some of the so-called extinct species have never passed into
recent ones?"

He also quotes a remarkable passage in the postscript to a letter
written to Sir John Herschel in 1836: "In regard to the origination of
new species, I am very glad to find that you think it probable it may be
carried on through the intervention of intermediate causes."

How nearly Lyell was made a convert to evolution by reading Lamarck's
works may be seen by the following extracts from his letters, quoted by
Huxley:

  "I think the old 'creation' is almost as much required as ever, but
  of course it takes a new form if Lamarck's views, improved by yours,
  are adopted." (To Darwin, March 11, 1863, p. 363.)

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "As to Lamarck, I find that Grove, who has been reading him, is
  wonderfully struck with his book. I remember that it was the
  conclusion he (Lamarck) came to about man, that fortified me thirty
  years ago against the great impression which his argument at first
  made on my mind--all the greater because Constant Prevost, a pupil
  of Cuvier forty years ago, told me his conviction 'that Cuvier
  thought species not real, but that science could not advance without
  assuming that they were so.'"

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "When I came to the conclusion that after all Lamarck was going to
  be shown to be right, that we must 'go the whole orang,' I re-read
  his book, and remembering when it was written, I felt I had done
  him injustice.

  "Even as to man's gradual acquisition of more and more ideas, and
  then of speech slowly as the ideas multiplied, and then his
  persecution of the beings most nearly allied and competing with
  him--all this is very Darwinian.

  "The substitution of the variety-making power for 'volition,'
  'muscular action,' etc. (and in plants even volition was not called
  in), is in some respects only a change of names. Call a new variety
  a new creation, one may say of the former, as of the latter, what
  you say when you observe that the creationist explains nothing, and
  only affirms 'it is so because it is so.'

  "Lamarck's belief in the slow changes in the organic and inorganic
  world in the year 1800 was surely above the standard of his times,
  and he was right about progression in the main, though you have
  vastly advanced that doctrine. As to Owen in his 'Aye Aye' paper, he
  seems to me a disciple of Pouchet, who converted him at Rouen to
  'spontaneous generation.'

  "Have I not, at p. 412, put the vast distinction between you and
  Lamarck as to 'necessary progression' strongly enough?" (To Darwin,
  March 15, 1863. _Lyell's Letters_, ii., p. 365.)

Darwin, in the freedom of private correspondence, paid scant respect to
the views of his renowned predecessor, as the following extracts from
his published letters will show:

  "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to
  progression,' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals,' etc.
  But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his;
  though the means of change are wholly so." (Darwin's _Life and
  Letters_, ii., p. 23, 1844.)

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "With respect to books on this subject, I do not know of any
  systematical ones, except Lamarck's, which is veritable rubbish....
  Is it not strange that the author of such a book as the _Animaux
  sans Vertèbres_ should have written that insects, which never see
  their eggs, should _will_ (and plants, their seeds) to be of
  particular forms, so as to become attached to particular
  objects."[57] (ii., p. 29, 1844.)

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate
  describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has
  disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever
  work has done the subject harm." (ii., p. 39, no date.)

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "To talk of climate or Lamarckian habit producing such adaptions to
  other organic beings is futile." (ii., p. 121, 1858.)

On the other hand, another great English thinker and naturalist of rare
breadth and catholicity, and despite the fact that he rejected Lamarck's
peculiar evolutional views, associated him with the most eminent
biologists.

In a letter to Romanes, dated in 1882, Huxley thus estimates Lamarck's
position in the scientific world:

  "I am not likely to take a low view of Darwin's position in the
  history of science, but I am disposed to think that Buffon and
  Lamarck would run him hard in both genius and fertility. In breadth
  of view and in extent of knowledge these two men were giants, though
  we are apt to forget their services. Von Bär was another man of the
  same stamp; Cuvier, in a somewhat lower rank, another; and J. Müller
  another." (_Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley_, ii., p. 42,
  1900.)

The memory of Lamarck is deeply and warmly cherished throughout France.
He gave his country a second Linné. One of the leading botanists in
Europe, and the greatest zoölogist of his time, he now shares equally
with Geoffroy St. Hilaire and with Cuvier the distinction of raising
biological science to that eminence in the first third of the nineteenth
century which placed France, as the mother of biologists, in the van of
all the nations. When we add to his triumphs in pure zoölogy the fact
that he was in his time the philosopher of biology, it is not going too
far to crown him as one of the intellectual glories, not only of France,
but of the civilized world.

How warmly his memory is now cherished may be appreciated by the perusal
of the following letter, with its delightful reminiscences, for which we
are indebted to the venerable and distinguished zoölogist and
comparative anatomist who formerly occupied the chair made illustrious
by Lamarck, and by his successor, De Blainville, and who founded the
Laboratoire Arago on the Mediterranean, also that of Experimental
Zoölogy at Roscoff, and who still conducts the _Journal de Zoologie
Expérimentale_.


  PARIS LE 28 _Décembre_, 1899.

  M. le PROFESSEUR PACKARD.

  _Cher Monsieur_: Vous m'avez fait l'honneur de me demander des
  renseignements sur la famille de De Lamarck, et sur ses relations,
  afin de vous en servir dans la biographie que vous préparez de
  notre grand naturaliste.

  Je n'ai rien appris de plus que ce que vous voulez bien me rappeler
  comme l'ayant trouvé dans mon adresse de 1889. Je ne connais plus ni
  les noms ni les adresses des parents de De Lamarck, et c'est avec
  regret qu'il ne m'est pas possible de répondre à vos désirs.

  Lorsque je commençai mes études à Paris, on ne s'occupait guère des
  idées générales de De Lamarck que pour s'en moquer. Excepté Geoffroy
  St. Hilaire et De Blainville, dont j'ai pu suivre les belles leçons
  et qui le citaient souvent, on parlait peu de la philosophie
  zoologique.

  Il m'a été possible de causer avec des anciens collègues du grand
  naturaliste; au Jardin des Plantes de très grands savants, dont je
  ne veux pas écrire le nom, le traitaient _de fou_!

  Il avait loué un appartement sur le haut d'une maison, et là
  cherchait d'après la direction des nuages à prévoir l'état du temps.

  On riait de ces études. N'est-ce pas comme un observatoire de
  météorologie que ce savant zoologiste avait pour ainsi dire fondé
  avant que la science ne se fut emparée de l'idée?

  Lorsque j'eus l'honneur d'être nommé professeur au Jardin des
  Plantes en 1865, je fis l'historique de la chaire que j'occupais, et
  qui avait été illustrée par De Lamarck et De Blainville. Je crois
  que je suis le premier à avoir fait l'histoire de notre grand
  naturaliste dans un cours public. Je dus travailler pas mal pour
  arriver à bien saisir l'idée fondamentale de la philosophie. Les
  définitions de la nature et des forces qui président aux changements
  qui modifient les êtres d'après les conditions auxquelles ils sont
  soumis ne sont pas toujours faciles à rendre claires pour un public
  souvent difficile.

  Ce qui frappe surtout dans ses raisonnements, c'est que De Lamarck
  est parfaitement logique. Il comprend très bien ce que plus d'un
  transformiste de nos jours ne cherche pas à éclairer, que le premier
  pas, le pas difficile à faire pour arriver à expliquer la création
  par des modifications successives, c'est le passage de la matière
  inorganique à la matière organisée, et il imagine la chaleur et
  l'électricité comme étant les deux facteurs qui par attraction ou
  répulsion finissent par former ces petits amas organisés qui seront
  le point de départ de toutes les transformations de tous les
  organismes.

  Voilà le point de départ--la génération spontanée se trouve ainsi
  expliquée!

  De Lamarck était un grand et profond observateur. On me disait au
  Museum (des contemporains) qu'il avait l'Instinct de l'Espèce. Il y
  aurait beaucoup à dire sur cette expression--l'instinct de
  l'espèce--il m'est difficile dans une simple lettre de développer
  des idées philosophiques que j'ai sur cette question,--laquelle
  suppose la notion de l'individu parfaitement définie et acquis.

  Je ne vous citerai qu'un exemple. Je ne l'ai vu signalé nulle part
  dans les ouvrages anciens sur De Lamarck.

  Qu'étaient nos connaissances à l'époque de De Lamarck sur les
  Polypiers? Les Hydraires étaient loin d'avoir fourni les
  remarquables observations qui parurent dans le milieu à peu près du
  siècle qui vient de finir, et cependant De Lamarck déplace hardiment
  la Lucernaire--l'éloigne des Coralliaires, et la rapproche des êtres
  qui forment le grand groupe des Hydraires. Ce trait me paraît
  remarquable et le rapporte à cette réputation qu'il avait au Museum
  de jouir de l'instinct de l'espèce.

  De toute part on acclame le grand naturaliste, et'il n'y a pas même
  une rue portant son nom aux environs du Jardin des Plantes? J'ai eu
  beau réclamer le conseil municipal de Paris à d'autres favoris que
  De Lamarck.

  Lorsque le Jardin des Plantes fut réorganisé par la Convention, De
  Lamarck avait 50 ans. Il ne s'était jusqu'alors occupé que de
  botanique. Il fut à cet age chargé de l'histoire de la partie du
  règne animal renfermant les animaux invertèbres sauf les Insectes et
  les Crustacés. La chaire est restée la même; elle comprend les vers,
  les helminthes, les mollusques, et ce qu'on appelait autrefois les
  Zoophytes ou Rayonnées, enfin les Infusoires. Quelle puissance de
  travail! Ne fallait-il pas pour passer de la Botanique, à 50 ans, à
  la Zoologie, et laisser un ouvrage semblable à celui qui illustre
  encore le nom du Botaniste devenue Zoologiste par ordre de la
  Convention!

  Sans doute dans cet ouvrage il y a bien des choses qui ne sont plus
  acceptables--mais pour le juger avec équité, il faut se porter a
  l'époque où il fut fait, et alors on est pris d'admiration pour
  l'auteur d'un aussi immense travail.

  J'ai une grande admiration pour le génie de De Lamarck, et je ne
  puis que vous louer de le faire encore mieux connaître de nos
  contemporains.

  Recevez, mon cher collègue, l'expression de mes sentiments d'estime
  pour vos travaux remarquables et croyez-moi--tout à vous,

  H. DE LACAZE DUTHIERS.


FOOTNOTES:

[50] For example, while Cuvier's chair was in the field of vertebrate
zoölogy, owing to the kindness of Lamarck ("_par gracieuseté de la part
de M. de Lamarck_") he had retained that of Mollusca, and yet it was in
the special classification of the molluscs that Lamarck did his best
work (Blainville, _l. c._, p. 116).

[51] De Blainville states that "the Academy did not even allow it to be
printed in the form in which it was pronounced" (p. 324); and again he
speaks of the lack of judgment in Cuvier's estimate of Lamarck, "the
naturalist who had the greatest force in the general conception of
beings and of phenomena, although he might often be far from the path"
(p. 323).

[52] _Fragments Biographiques_, pp. 209-219.

[53] _L. c._ p. 81.

[54] _Histoire Naturelle Drolatique et Philosophique des Professeurs du
Jardin des Plantes, _etc._ Par Isid. S. de Gosse. Avec des Annotations
de M. Frédéric Gerard._ Paris, 1847.

[55] _Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck_, Jena, 1882.

[56] _Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Joh. Müller und Charles Darwin_,
1872.

[57] We have been unable to find these statements in any of Lamarck's
writings.




CHAPTER VII

LAMARCK'S WORK IN METEOROLOGY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE


When a medical student in Paris, Lamarck, from day to day watching the
clouds from his attic windows, became much interested in meteorology,
and, indeed, at first this subject had nearly as much attraction for him
as botany. For a long period he pursued these studies, and he was the
first one to foretell the probabilities of the weather, thus
anticipating by over half a century the modern idea of making the
science of meteorology of practical use to mankind.

His article, "De l'influence de la lune sur l'atmosphère terrestre,"
appeared in the _Journal de Physique_ for 1798, and was translated in
two English journals. The titles of several other essays will be found
in the Bibliography at the close of this volume.

From 1799 to 1810 he regularly published an annual meteorological report
containing the statement of probabilities acquired by a long series of
observations on the state of the weather and the variations of the
atmosphere at different times of the year, giving indications of the
periods when to expect pleasant weather, or rain, storms, tempests,
frosts, thaws, etc.; finally the citations of these probabilities of
times favorable to fêtes, journeys, voyages, harvesting crops, and
other enterprises dependent on good weather.

Lamarck thus explained the principles on which he based his
probabilities: Two kinds of causes, he says, displace the fluids which
compose the atmosphere, some being variable and irregular, others
constant, whose action is subject to progressive and fixed laws.

Between the tropics constant causes exercise an action so considerable
that the irregular effects of variable causes are there in some degree
lost; hence result the prevailing winds which in these climates become
established and change at determinate epochs.

Beyond the tropics, and especially toward the middle of the temperate
zones, variable causes predominate. We can, however, still discover
there the effects of the action of constant causes, though much
weakened; we can assign them the principal epochs, and in a great number
of cases make this knowledge turn to our profit. It is in the elevation
and depression (_abaissement_) of the moon above and below the celestial
equator that we should seek for the most constant of these causes.

With his usual facility in such matters, he was not long in advancing a
theory, according to which the atmosphere is regarded as resembling the
sea, having a surface, waves, and storms; it ought likewise to have a
flux and reflux, for the moon ought to exercise the same influence upon
it that it does on the ocean. In the temperate and frigid zones,
therefore, the wind, which is only the tide of the atmosphere, must
depend greatly on the declination of the moon; it ought to blow toward
the pole that is nearest to it, and advancing in that direction only, in
order to reach every place, traversing dry countries or extensive seas,
it ought then to render the sky serene or stormy. If the influence of
the moon on the weather is denied, it is only that it may be referred to
its phases, but its position in the ecliptic is regarded as affording
probabilities much nearer the truth.[58]

In each of these annuals Lamarck took great care to avoid making any
positive predictions. "No one," he says, "could make these predictions
without deceiving himself and abusing the confidence of persons who
might place reliance on them." He only intended to propose simple
probabilities.

After the publication of the first of these annuals, at the request of
Lamarck, who had made it the subject of a memoir read to the Institute
in 1800 (9 ventôse, l'an IX.), Chaptal, Minister of the Interior,
thought it well to establish in France a regular correspondence of
meteorological observations made daily at different points remote from
each other, and he conferred the direction of it on Lamarck. This system
of meteorological reports lasted but a short time, and was not
maintained by Chaptal's successor. After three of these annual reports
had appeared, Lamarck rather suddenly stopped publishing them, and an
incident occurred in connection with their cessation which led to the
story that he had suffered ill treatment and neglect from Napoleon I.

It has been supposed that Lamarck, who was frank and at times brusque in
character, had made some enemies, and that he had been represented to
the Emperor as a maker of almanacs and of weather predictions, and that
Napoleon, during a reception, showing to Lamarck his great
dissatisfaction with the annuals, had ordered him to stop their
publication.

But according to Bourguin's statement this is not the correct version.
He tells us:

  "According to traditions preserved in the family of Lamarck things
  did not happen so at all. During a reception given to the Institute
  at the Tuileries, Napoleon, who really liked Lamarck, spoke to him
  in a jocular way about his weather probabilities, and Lamarck, very
  much provoked (_très contrarié_) at being thus chaffed in the
  presence of his colleagues, resolved to stop the publication of his
  observations on the weather. What proves that this version is the
  true one is that Lamarck published another annual which he had in
  preparation for the year 1810. In the preface he announced that his
  age, ill health, and his circumstances placed him in the unfortunate
  necessity of ceasing to busy himself with this periodical work. He
  ended by inviting those who had the taste for meteorological
  observations, and the means of devoting their time to it, to take up
  with confidence an enterprise good in itself, based on a genuine
  foundation, and from which the public would derive advantageous
  results."

These opuscles, such as they were, in which Lamarck treated different
subjects bearing on the winds, great droughts, rainy seasons, tides,
etc., became the precursors of the _Annuaires du Bureau des
Longitudes_.

An observation of Lamarck's on a rare and curious form of cloud has
quite recently been referred to by a French meteorologist. It is
probable, says M. E. Durand-Greville in _La Nature_, November 24, 1900,
that Lamarck was the first to observe the so-called pocky or festoon
cloud, or mammato-cirrus cloud, which at rare intervals has been
observed since his time.[59]

Full of over confidence in the correctness of his views formed without
reference to experiments, although Lavoisier, by his discovery of oxygen
in the years 1772-85, and other researches, had laid the foundations of
the antiphlogistic or modern chemistry, Lamarck quixotically attempted
to substitute his own speculative views for those of the discoverers of
oxygen--Priestley (1774) and the great French chemist Lavoisier.
Lamarck, in his _Hydrogéologie_ (1802), went so far as to declare:

  "It is not true, and it seems to me even absurd to believe that pure
  air, which has been justly called _vital air_, and which chemists
  now call _oxygen gas_, can be the radical of saline matters--namely,
  can be the principle of acidity, of causticity, or any salinity
  whatever. There are a thousand ways of refuting this error without
  the possibility of a reply.... This hypothesis, the best of all
  those which had been imagined when Lavoisier conceived it, cannot
  now be longer held, since I have discovered what is really
  _caloric_" (p. 161).

After paying his respects to Priestley, he asks: "What, then, can be the
reason why the views of chemists and mine are so opposed?" and complains
that the former have avoided all written discussion on this subject. And
this after his three physico-chemical works, the _Réfutation_, the
_Recherches_, and the _Mémoires_ had appeared, and seemed to chemists to
be unworthy of a reply.

It must be admitted that Lamarck was on this occasion unduly
self-opinionated and stubborn in adhering to such views at a time when
the physical sciences were being placed on a firm and lasting basis by
experimental philosophers. The two great lessons of science--to suspend
one's judgment and to wait for more light in theoretical matters on
which scientific men were so divided--and the necessity of adhering to
his own line of biological study, where he had facts of his own
observing on which to rest his opinions, Lamarck did not seem ever to
have learned.

The excuse for his rash and quixotic course in respect to his
physico-chemical vagaries is that he had great mental activity. Lamarck
was a synthetic philosopher. He had been brought up in the encyclopædic
period of learning. He had from his early manhood been deeply interested
in physical subjects. In middle age he probably lived a very retired
life, did not mingle with his compeers or discuss his views with them.
So that when he came to publish them, he found not a single supporter.
His speculations were received in silence and not deemed worthy of
discussion.

A very just and discriminating judge of Lamarck's work, Professor
Cleland, thus refers to his writings on physics and chemistry:

  "The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be admitted, quite apart
  from all consideration of the famous hypothesis which bears his
  name, to have been want of control in speculation. Doubtless the
  speculative tendency furnished a powerful incentive to work, but it
  outran the legitimate deductions from observation, and led him into
  the production of volumes of worthless chemistry without
  experimental basis, as well as into spending much time in fruitless
  meteorological predictions." (_Encyc. Brit._, Art. LAMARCK.)

How a modern physicist regards Lamarck's views on physics may be seen by
the following statement kindly written for this book by Professor Carl
Barus of Brown University, Providence:

  "Lamarck's physical and chemical speculations, made throughout on
  the basis of the alchemistic philosophy of the time, will have
  little further interest to-day than as evidence showing the broadly
  philosophic tendencies of Lamarck's mind. Made without experiment
  and without mathematics, the contents of the three volumes will
  hardly repay perusal, except by the historian interested in certain
  aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science. The temerity with which
  physical phenomena are referred to occult static molecules,
  permeated by subtle fluids, the whole mechanism left without dynamic
  quality, since the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is
  markedly in contrast with the discredit into which such hypotheses
  have now fallen. It is true that an explanation of natural phenomena
  in terms "le feu éthéré, le feu calorique, et le feu fixé" might be
  interpreted with reference to the modern doctrine of energy; but it
  is certain that Lamarck, antedating Fresnel, Carnot, Ampère, not to
  mention their great followers, had not the faintest inkling of the
  possibility of such an interpretation. Indeed, one may readily
  account for the resemblance to modern views, seeing that all
  speculative systems of science must to some extent run in parallel,
  inasmuch as they begin with the facts of common experience. Nor were
  his speculations in any degree stimulating to theoretical science.
  Many of his mechanisms in which the ether operates on a plane of
  equality with the air can only be regarded with amusement. The whole
  of his elaborate schemes of color classification may be instanced as
  forerunners of the methods commercially in vogue to-day; they are
  not the harbingers of methods scientifically in vogue. One looks in
  vain for research adequate to carry the load of so much speculative
  text.

  "Even if we realize that the beginnings of science could but be made
  amid such groping in the dark, it is a pity that a man of Lamarck's
  genius, which seems to have been destitute of the instincts of an
  experimentalist, should have lavished so much serious thought in
  evolving a system of chemical physics out of himself."

The chemical status of Lamarck's writings is thus stated by Professor H.
Carrington Bolton in a letter dated Washington, D. C., February 9, 1900:

  "Excuse delay in replying to your inquiry as to the chemical status
  of the French naturalist, Lamarck. Not until this morning have I
  found it convenient to go to the Library of Congress. That Library
  has not the _Recherches_ nor the _Mémoires_, but the position of
  Lamarck is well known. He had no influence on chemistry, and his
  name is not mentioned in the principal histories of chemistry. He
  made no experiments, but depended upon his imagination for his
  facts; he opposed the tenets of the new French school founded by
  Lavoisier, and proposed a fanciful scheme of abstract principles
  that remind one of alchemy.

  "Cuvier, in his _Éloge_ (_Mémoires Acad. Royale des Sciences_,
  1832), estimates Lamarck correctly as respects his position in
  physical science."

Lamarck boldly carried the principle of change and evolution into
inorganic nature by the same law of change of circumstances producing
change of species.

Under the head, "De l'espèce parmi les minéraux," p. 149, the author
states that he had for a long time supposed that there were no species
among minerals. Here, also, he doubts, and boldly, if not rashly, in
this case, opposes accepted views, and in this field, as elsewhere,
shows, at least, his independence of thought.

  "They teach in Paris," he says, "that the integrant molecule of each
  kind of compound is invariable in nature, and consequently that it
  is as old as nature, hence, mineral species are constant.

  "For myself, I declare that I am persuaded, and even feel convinced,
  that the integrant molecule of every compound substance whatever,
  may change its nature, namely, may undergo changes in the number and
  in the proportions of the principles which compose it."

He enlarges on this subject through eight pages. He was evidently led to
take this view from his assumption that everything, every natural
object, organic or inorganic, undergoes a change. But it may be
objected that this view will not apply to minerals, because those of the
archæan rocks do not differ, and have undergone no change since then to
the present time, unless we except such minerals as are alteration
products due to metamorphism. The primary laws of nature, of physics,
and of chemistry are unchangeable, while change, progression from the
generalized to the specialized, is distinctly characteristic of the
organic as opposed to the inorganic world.


FOOTNOTES:

[58] "On the Influence of the Moon on the Earth's Atmosphere," _Journal
de Physique_, prairial, l'an VI. (1798).

[59] Nature, Dec. 6, 1900.




CHAPTER VIII

LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY


Whatever may be said of his chemical and physical lucubrations, Lamarck
in his geological and palæontological writings is, despite their errors,
always suggestive, and in some most important respects in advance of his
time. And this largely for the reason that he had once travelled, and to
some extent observed geological phenomena, in the central regions of
France, in Germany, and Hungary; visiting mines and collecting ores and
minerals, besides being in a degree familiar with the French cretaceous
fossils, but more especially those of the tertiary strata of Paris and
its vicinity. He had, therefore, from his own experience, slight as it
was, some solid grounds of facts and observations on which to meditate
and from which to reason.

He did not attempt to touch upon cosmological theories--chaos and
creation--but, rather, confined himself to the earth, and more
particularly to the action of the ocean, and to the changes which he
believed to be due to organic agencies. The most impressive truth in
geology is the conception of the immensity of past time, and this truth
Lamarck fully realized. His views are to be found in a little book of
268 pages, entitled _Hydrogéologie_. It appeared in 1802 (an X.), or
ten years before the first publication of Cuvier's famous _Discours sur
les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe_ (1812). Written in his popular
and attractive style, and thoroughly in accord with the cosmological and
theological prepossessions of the age, the Discours was widely read, and
passed through many editions. On the other hand, the _Hydrogéologie_
died stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a reader, never reaching a
second edition, and is now, like most of his works, a bibliographical
rarity.

The only writer who has said a word in its favor, or contrasted it with
the work of Cuvier, is the judicious and candid Huxley, who, though by
no means favorable to Lamarck's factors of evolution, frankly said:

  "The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the
  traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of
  catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the _Discours sur les
  Revolutions de la Surface du Globe_ were held to be models of sound
  scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and
  philosophic hypotheses of the _Hydrogéologie_ were scouted."[60]

Before summarizing the contents of this book, let us glance at the
geological atmosphere--thin and tenuous as it was then--in which Lamarck
lived. The credit of being the first observer, before Steno (1669), to
state that fossils are the remains of animals which were once alive, is
due to an Italian, Frascatero, of Verona, who wrote in 1517.

  "But," says Lyell,[61] "the clear and philosophical views of
  Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers
  of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the
  discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: First,
  whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and,
  secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could not
  be explained by the deluge of Noah."

Previous to this the great artist, architect, engineer, and musician,
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who, among other great works, planned and
executed some navigable canals in Northern Italy, and who was an
observer of rare penetration and judgment, saw how fossil shells were
formed, saying that the mud of rivers had covered and penetrated into
the interior of fossil shells at a time when these were still at the
bottom of the sea near the coast.[62]

That versatile and observing genius, Bernard Palissy, as early as 1580,
in a book entitled _The Origin of Springs from Rain-water_, and in other
writings, criticized the notions of the time, especially of Italian
writers, that petrified shells had all been left by the universal
deluge.

  "It has happened," said Fontenelle, in his eulogy on Palissy,
  delivered before the French Academy a century and a half later,
  "that a potter who knew neither Latin nor Greek dared, toward the
  end of the sixteenth century, to say in Paris, and in the presence
  of all the doctors, that fossil shells were veritable shells
  deposited at some time by the sea in the places where they were
  then found; that the animals had given to the figured stones all
  their different shapes, and that he boldly defied all the school of
  Aristotle to attack his proofs."[63]

Then succeeded, at the end of the seventeenth century, the forerunners
of modern geology: Steno (1669), Leibnitz (1683), Ray (1692), Woodward
(1695), Vallisneri (1721), while Moro published his views in 1745. In
the eighteenth century Réaumur[64] (1720) presented a paper on the
fossil shells of Touraine.

Cuvier[65] thus pays his respects, in at least an unsympathetic way, to
the geological essayists and compilers of the seventeenth century:

  "The end of the seventeenth century lived to see the birth of a new
  science, which took, in its infancy, the high-sounding name of
  'Theory of the Earth.' Starting from a small number of facts, badly
  observed, connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pretended to
  go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play with them, and
  to create their history. Its arbitrary methods, its pompous
  language, altogether seemed to render it foreign to the other
  sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a long time cast
  it out of the circle of their studies."

Their views, often premature, composed of half-truths, were mingled with
glaring errors and fantastic misconceptions, but were none the less
germinal. Leibnitz was the first to propose the nebular hypothesis,
which was more fully elaborated by Kant and Laplace. Buffon, influenced
by the writing of Leibnitz, in his _Théorie de la Terre_, published in
1749, adopted his notion of an original volcanic nucleus and a universal
ocean, the latter as he thought leaving the land dry by draining into
subterranean caverns. He also dimly saw, or gathered from his reading,
that the mountains and valleys were due to secondary causes; that
fossiliferous strata had been deposited by ocean currents, and that
rivers had transported materials from the highlands to the lowlands. He
also states that many of the fossil shells which occur in Europe do not
live in the adjacent seas, and that there are remains of fishes and of
plants not now living in Europe, and which are either extinct or live in
more southern climates, and others in tropical seas. Also that the bones
and teeth of elephants and of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus found in
Siberia and elsewhere in northern Europe and Asia indicate that these
animals must have lived there, though at present restricted to the
tropics. In his last essay, _Époques de la Nature_ (1778), he claims
that the earth's history may be divided into epochs, from the earliest
to the present time. The first epoch was that of fluidity, of
incandescence, when the earth and the planets assumed their form; the
second, of cooling; the third, when the waters covered the earth, and
volcanoes began to be active; the fourth, that of the retreat of the
seas, and the fifth the age when the elephants, the hippopotamus, and
other southern animals lived in the regions of the north; the sixth,
when the two continents, America and the old world, became separate; the
seventh and last being the age of man. Above all, by his attractive
style and bold suggestions he popularized the subjects and created an
interest in these matters and a spirit of inquiry which spread
throughout France and the rest of Europe.

But notwithstanding the crude and uncritical nature of the writings of
the second half of the eighteenth century, resulting from the lack of
that more careful and detailed observation which characterizes our day,
there was during this period a widespread interest in physical and
natural science, and it led up to that more exact study of nature which
signalizes the nineteenth century. "More new truths concerning the
external world," says Buckle, "were discovered in France during the
latter half of the eighteenth century than during all preceding periods
put together."[66] As Perkins[67] says: "Interest in scientific study,
as in political investigation, seemed to rise suddenly from almost
complete inactivity to extraordinary development. In both departments
English thinkers had led the way, but if the impulse to such
investigations came from without, the work done in France in every
branch of scientific research during the eighteenth century was excelled
by no other nation, and England alone could assert any claim to results
of equal importance. The researches of Coulomb in electricity, of Buffon
in geology, of Lavoisier in chemistry, of Daubenton in comparative
anatomy, carried still farther by their illustrious successors towards
the close of the century, did much to establish conceptions of the
universe and its laws upon a scientific basis." And not only did
Rousseau make botany fashionable, but Goldsmith wrote from Paris in
1755: "I have seen as bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures
of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles." Petit lectured on
astronomy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and
ladies of fashion, as well as professional students.[68] The
popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopædists.

Here should be mentioned one of Buffon's contemporaries and countrymen;
one who was the first true field geologist, an observer rather than a
compiler or theorist. This was Jean E. Guettard (1715-1786). He
published, says Sir Archibald Geikie, in his valuable work, _The
Founders of Geology_, about two hundred papers on a wide range of
scientific subjects, besides half a dozen quarto volumes of his
observations, together with many excellent plates. Geikie also states
that he is undoubtedly entitled to rank among the first great pioneers
of modern geology. He was the first (1751) to make a geological map of
northern France, and roughly traced the limits of his three bands or
formations from France across the southeastern English counties. In his
work on "The degradation of mountains effected in our time by heavy
rains, rivers, and the sea,"[69] he states that the sea is the most
potent destroyer of the land, and that the material thus removed is
deposited either on the land or along the shores of the sea. He thought
that the levels of the valleys are at present being raised, owing to the
deposit of detritus in them. He points out that the deposits laid down
by the ocean do not extend far out to sea, "that consequently the
elevations of new mountains in the sea, by the deposition of sediment,
is a process very difficult to conceive; that the transport of the
sediment as far as the equator is not less improbable; and that still
more difficult to accept is the suggestion that the sediment from our
continent is carried into the seas of the New World. In short, we are
still very little advanced towards the theory of the earth as it now
exists." Guettard was the first to discover the volcanoes of Auvergne,
but he was "hopelessly wrong" in regard to the origin of basalt,
forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was
thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his "observations in
Auvergne practically started the Vulcanist camp."

We now come to Lamarck's own time. He must have been familiar with the
results of Pallas's travels in Russia and Siberia (1793-94). The
distinguished German zoölogist and geologist, besides working out the
geology of the Ural Mountains, showed, in 1777, that there was a general
law in the formation of all mountain chains composed chiefly of primary
rocks;[70] the granitic axis being flanked by schists, and these by
fossiliferous strata. From his observations made on the Volga and about
its mouth, he presented proofs of the former extension, in comparatively
recent times, of the Caspian Sea. But still more pregnant and remarkable
was his discovery of an entire rhinoceros, with its flesh and skin, in
the frozen soil of Siberia. His memoir on this animal places him among
the forerunners of, if not within the ranks of, the founders of
palæontology.

Meanwhile Soldani, an Italian, had, in 1780, shown that the limestone
strata of Italy had accumulated in a deep sea, at least far from land,
and he was the first to observe the alternation of marine and
fresh-water strata in the Paris basin.

Lamarck must have taken much interest in the famous controversy between
the Vulcanists and Neptunists. He visited Freyburg in 1771; whether he
met Werner is not known, as Werner began to lecture in 1775. He must
have personally known Faujas of Paris, who, in 1779, published his
description of the volcanoes of Vivarais and Velay; while Desmarest's
(1725-1815) elaborate work on the volcanoes of Auvergne, published in
1774, in which he proved the igneous origin of basalt, was the best
piece of geological exploration which had yet been accomplished, and is
still a classic.[71]

Werner (1750-1817), the propounder of the Neptunian theory, was one of
the founders of modern geology and of palæontology. His work entitled
_Ueber die aüssern Kennzeichen der Fossilien_ appeared in 1774; his
_Kurze Klassifikation und Beschreibung der Gebirgsarten_ in 1787. He
discovered the law of the superposition of stratified rocks, though he
wrongly considered volcanic rocks, such as basalt, to be of aqueous
origin, being as he supposed formed of chemical precipitates from water.
But he was the first to state that the age of different formations can
be told by their fossils, certain species being confined to particular
beds, while others ranged throughout whole formations, and others seemed
to occur in several different formations; "the original species found in
these formations appearing to have been so constituted as to live
through a variety of changes which had destroyed hundreds of other
species which we find confined to particular beds."[72] His views as
regards fossils, as Jameson states, were probably not known to Cuvier,
and it is more than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed
that fossils appear first in "transition" or palæozoic strata, and were
mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the
fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while
in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the remains of birds and
quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land
plants. His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the
oldest rocks are very different from any of the species of the present
time; that the newer the formation, the more do the remains approach in
form to the organic beings of the present creation, and that in the
very latest formations, fossil remains of species now existing occur.
Such advanced views as these would seem to entitle Werner to rank as one
of the founders of palæontology.[73]

Hutton's _Theory of the Earth_ appeared in 1785, and in a more developed
state, as a separate work, in 1795.[74] "The ruins of an older world,"
he said, "are visible in the present structure of our planet, and the
strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea,
and were formed out of the waste of preëxisting continents. The same
forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical
violence, even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the
sea, where they are spread out and form strata analogous to those of
more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the bottom of the
ocean, they became afterwards altered and consolidated by volcanic heat,
and were then heaved up, fractured, and contorted." Again he said: "In
the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no
prospect of an end." As Lyell remarks: "Hutton imagined that the
continents were first gradually destroyed by aqueous degradation, and
when their ruins had furnished materials for new continents, they were
upheaved by violent convulsions. He therefore required alternate periods
of general disturbance and repose."

To Hutton, therefore, we are indebted for the idea of the immensity of
the duration of time. He was the forerunner of Lyell and of the
uniformitarian school of geologists.

Hutton observed that fossils characterized certain strata, but the value
of fossils as time-marks and the principle of the superposition of
stratified fossiliferous rocks were still more clearly established by
William Smith, an English surveyor, in 1790. Meanwhile the Abbé Haüy,
the founder of crystallography, was in 1802 Professor of Mineralogy in
the Jardin des Plantes.


_Lamarck's Contributions to Physical Geology; his Theory of the Earth._

Such were the amount and kind of knowledge regarding the origin and
structure of our earth which existed at the close of the eighteenth
century, while Lamarck was meditating his _Hydrogéologie_, and had begun
to study the invertebrate fossils of the Paris tertiary basin.

His object, he says in his work, is to present certain considerations
which he believed to be new and of the first order, which had escaped
the notice of physicists, and which seemed to him should serve as the
foundations for a good theory of the earth. His theses are:

  1. What are the natural consequences of the influence and the
  movements of the waters on the surface of the globe?

  2. Why does the sea constantly occupy a basin within the limits
  which contain it, and there separate the dry parts of the surface of
  the globe always projecting above it?

  3. Has the ocean basin always existed where we actually see it, and
  if we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea in places where it no
  longer remains, by what cause was it found there, and why is it no
  longer there?

  4. What influence have living bodies exerted on the substances found
  on the surface of the earth and which compose the crust which
  invests it, and what are the general results of this influence?

Lamarck then disclaims any intentions of framing brilliant hypotheses
based on supposititious principles, but nevertheless, as we shall see,
he falls into this same error, and like others of his period makes some
preposterous hypotheses, though these are far less so than those of
Cuvier's _Discours_. He distinguishes between the action of rivers or of
fresh-water currents, torrents, storms, the melting of snow, and the
work of the ocean. The rivers wear away and bear materials from the
highlands to the lowlands, so that the plains are gradually elevated;
ravines form and become immense valleys, and their sides form elevated
crests and pass into mountain ranges.

He brings out and emphasizes the fact, now so well known, that the
erosive action of rain and rivers has formed mountains of a certain
class.

  "It is then evident to me, that every mountain which is not the
  result of a _volcanic irruption_ or of some local catastrophe, has
  been carved out from a plain, where its mass is gradually formed,
  and was a part of it; hence what in this case are the summits of
  the mountains are only the remains of the former level of the plain
  unless the process of washing away and other means of degradation
  have not since reduced its height."

Now this will apply perfectly well to our table-lands, mesas, the
mountains of our bad-lands, even to our Catskills and to many elevations
of this nature in France and in northern Africa. But Lamarck
unfortunately does not stop here, but with the zeal of an innovator, by
no means confined to his time alone, claims that the mountain masses of
the Alps and the Andes were carved out of plains which had been raised
above the sea-level to the present heights of those mountains.

Two causes, he says, have concurred in forming these elevated plains.

  "One consists in the continual accumulation of material filling the
  portion of the ocean-basin from which the same seas slowly retreat;
  for it does not abandon those parts of the ocean-basin which are
  situated nearer and nearer to the shores that it tends to leave,
  until after having filled its bottom and having gradually raised it.
  It follows that the coasts which the sea is abandoning are never
  made by a very deep-lying formation, however often it appears to be
  such, for they are continually elevated as the result of the
  perpetual balancing of the sea, which casts off from its shores all
  the sediments brought down by the rivers; in such a way that the
  great depths of the ocean are not near the shore from which the sea
  retreats, but out in the middle of the ocean and near the opposite
  shores which the sea tends to invade.

  "The other cause, as we shall see, is found in the detritus of
  organic bodies successively accumulated, which perpetually elevates,
  although with extreme slowness, the soil of the dry portions of the
  globe, and which does it all the more rapidly, as the situation of
  these parts gives less play to the degradation of the surface caused
  by the rivers.

  "Doubtless a plain which is destined some day to furnish the
  mountains which the rivers will carve out from its mass would have,
  when still but a little way from the sea, but a moderate elevation
  above its river channels; but gradually as the ocean basin removed
  from this plain, this basin constantly sinking down into the
  interior (_épaisseur_) of the external crust of the globe, and the
  soil of the plain perpetually rising higher from the deposition of
  the detritus of organic bodies, it results that, after ages of
  elevation of the plain in question, it would be in the end
  sufficiently thick for high mountains to be shaped and carved out of
  its mass.

  "Although the ephemeral length of life of man prevents his
  appreciation of this fact, it is certain that the soil of a plain
  unceasingly acquires a real increase in its elevation in proportion
  as it is covered with different plants and animals. Indeed the
  débris successively heaped up for numerous generations of all these
  beings which have by turns perished, and which, as the result of the
  action of their organs, have, during the course of this life, given
  rise to combinations which would never have existed without this
  means, most of the principles which have formed them not being
  borrowed from the soil; this débris, I say, wasting successively on
  the soil of the plain in question, gradually increases the thickness
  of its external bed, multiplies there the mineral matters of all
  kinds and gradually elevates the formation."

Our author, as is evident, had no conception, nor had any one else at
the time he wrote, of the slow secular elevation of a continental
plateau by crust-movements, and Lamarck's idea of the formation of
elevated plains on land by the accumulation of débris of organisms is
manifestly inadequate, our aërial or eolian rocks and loess being
wind-deposits of sand and silt rather than matters of organic origin.
Thus he cites as an example of his theory the vast elevated plains of
Tartary, which he thought had been dry land from time immemorable,
though we now know that the rise took place in the quaternary or present
period. On the other hand, given these vast elevated plains, he was
correct in affirming that rivers flowing through them wore out enormous
valleys and carved out high mountains, left standing by atmospheric
erosion, for examples of such are to be seen in the valley of the Nile,
the Colorado, the Upper Missouri, etc.

He then distinguishes between granitic or crystalline mountains, and
those composed of stratified rocks and volcanic mountains.

The erosive action of rivers is thus discussed; they tend first, he
says, to fill up the ocean basins, and second, to make the surface of
the land broken and mountainous, by excavating and furrowing the plains.

Our author did not at all understand the causes of the inclination or
tilting up of strata. Little close observation or field work had yet
been done, and the rocks about Paris are but slightly if at all
disturbed. He attributes the dipping down of strata to the inclination
of the shores of the sea, though he adds that nevertheless it is often
due to local subsidences. And then he remarks that "indeed in many
mountains, and especially in the Pyrenees, in the very centre of these
mountains, we observe that the strata are for the most part either
vertical or so inclined that they more or less approach this direction."

  "But," he asks, "should we conclude from this that there has
  necessarily occurred a universal catastrophe, a general overturning?
  This assumption, so convenient for those naturalists who would
  explain all the facts of this kind without taking the trouble to
  observe and study the course which nature follows, is not at all
  necessary here; for it is easy to conceive that the inclined
  direction of the beds in the mountains may have been produced by
  other causes, and especially by causes more natural and less
  hypothetical than a general overturning of strata."

While streams of fresh water tend to fill up and destroy the ocean
basins, he also insists that the movements of the sea, such as the
tides, currents, storms, submarine volcanoes, etc., on the contrary,
tend to unceasingly excavate and reëstablish these basins. Of course we
now know that tides and currents have no effect in the ocean depths,
though their scouring effects near shore in shallow waters have locally
had a marked effect in changing the relations of land and sea. Lamarck
went so far as to insist that the ocean basin owes its existence and its
preservation to the scouring action of the tides and currents.

The earth's interior was, in Lamarck's opinion, solid, formed of
quartzose and silicious rocks, and its centre of gravity did not
coincide with its geographical centre, or what he calls the _centre de
forme_. He imagined also that the ocean revolved around the globe from
east to west, and that this movement, by its continuity, displaced the
ocean basin and made it pass successively over all the surface of the
earth.

Then, in the third chapter, he asks if the basin of the sea has always
been where we now actually see it, and whether we find proofs of the
sojourn of the sea in the place where it is now absent; if so, what are
the causes of these changes. He reiterates his strange idea of a general
movement of the ocean from east to west, at the rate of at least three
leagues in twenty-four hours and due to the moon's influence. And here
Lamarck, in spite of his uniformitarian principles, is strongly
cataclysmic. What he seems to have in mind is the great equatorial
current between Africa and the West Indies. To this perpetual movement
of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean he ventures to attribute the
excavation of the Gulf of Mexico, and presumes that at the end of ages
it will break through the Isthmus of Panama, and transform America into
two great islands or two small continents. Not understanding that the
islands are either the result of upheaval, or outliers of continents,
due to subsidence, Lamarck supposed that his westward flow of the ocean,
due to the moon's attraction, eroded the eastern shores of America, and
the currents thus formed "in their efforts to move westward, arrested by
America and by the eastern coasts of China, were in great part diverted
towards the South Pole, and seeking to break through a passage across
the ancient continent have, a long time since, reduced the portion of
this continent which united New Holland to Asia into an archipelago
which comprises the Molucca, Philippine, and Mariana Islands." The West
Indies and Windward Islands were formed by the same means, and the sea
not breaking through the Isthmus of Panama was turned southward, and the
action of its currents resulted in detaching the island of Tierra del
Fuego from South America. In like manner New Zealand was separated from
New Holland, Madagascar from Africa, and Ceylon from India.

He then refers to other "displacements of the ocean basin," to the
shallowing of the Straits of Sunda, of the Baltic Sea, the ancient
subsidence of the coast of Holland and Zealand, and states that Sweden
offers all the appearance of having recently emerged from the sea, while
the Caspian Sea, formerly much larger than at present, was once in
communication with the Black Sea, and that some day the Straits of Sunda
and the Straits of Dover will be dry land, so that the union of England
and France will be formed anew.

Strangely enough, with these facts known to him, Lamarck did not see
that such changes were due to changes of level of the land rather than
to their being abandoned or invaded by the sea, but explained these by
his bizarre hypothesis of westward-flowing currents due to the moon's
action; though it should be in all fairness stated that down to recent
times there have been those who believed that it is the sea and not the
land which has changed its level.

This idea, that the sea and not the land has changed its level, was
generally held at the time Lamarck wrote, though Strabo had made the
shrewd observation that it was the land which moved. The Greek
geographer threw aside the notion of some of his contemporaries, and
with wonderful prevision, considering the time he wrote and the limited
observations he could make, claimed that it is not the sea which has
risen or fallen, but the land itself which is sometimes raised up and
sometimes depressed, while the sea-bottom may also be elevated or sunk
down. He refers to such facts as deluges, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea.

  "And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, not
  merely the islands, but the continents which can be lifted up
  together with the sea; and, too, the large and small tracts may
  subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many
  others, have been engulfed by earthquakes."[75]

But it was not until eighteen centuries later that this doctrine, under
the teachings of Playfair, Leopold von Buch, and Élie de Beaumont
(1829-30) became generally accepted. In 1845 Humboldt remarked, "It is a
fact to-day recognized by all geologists, that the rise of continents is
due to an actual upheaval, and not to an apparent subsidence occasioned
by a general depression of the level of the sea" (_Cosmos_, i). Yet as
late as 1869 we have an essay by H. Trautschold[76] in which is a
statement of the arguments which can be brought forward in favor of the
doctrine that the increase of the land above sea level is due to the
retirement of the sea.[77]

As authentic and unimpeachable proofs of the former existence of the sea
where now it is absent, Lamarck cites the occurrence of fossils in rocks
inland. Lamarck's first paper on fossils was read to the Institute in
1799, or about three years previous to the publication of the
_Hydrogéologie_. He restricts the term "fossils" to vegetable and animal
remains, since the word in his time was by some loosely applied to
minerals as well as fossils; to anything dug out of the earth. "We find
fossils," he says, "on dry land, even in the middle of continents and
large islands; and not only in places far removed from the sea, but even
on mountains and in their bowels, at considerable heights, each part of
the earth's surface having at some time been a veritable ocean bottom."
He then quotes at length accounts of such instances from Buffon, and
notices their prodigious number, and that while the greater number are
marine, others are fresh-water and terrestrial shells, and the marine
shells may be divided into littoral and pelagic.

  "This distinction is very important to make, because the
  consideration of fossils is, as we have already said, one of the
  principal means of knowing well the revolutions which have taken
  place on the surface of our globe. This subject is of great
  importance, and under this point of view it should lead naturalists
  to study fossil shells, in order to compare them with their
  analogues which we can discover in the sea; finally, to carefully
  seek the places where each species lives, the banks which are
  formed of them, the different beds which these banks may present,
  etc., etc., so that we do not believe it out of place to insert here
  the principal considerations which have already resulted from that
  which is known in this respect.

"_The fossils which are found in the dry parts of the surface of the
globe are evident indications of a long sojourn of the sea in the very
places where we observe them._" Under this heading, after repeating the
statement previously made that fossils occur in all parts of the dry
land, in the midst of the continents and on high mountains, he inquires
_by what cause_ so many marine shells could be found in the explored
parts of the world. Discarding the old idea that they are monuments of
the deluge, transformed into fossils, he denies that there was such a
general catastrophe as a universal deluge, and goes on to say in his
assured, but calm and philosophic way:

  "On the globe which we inhabit, everything is submitted to continual
  and inevitable changes, which result from the essential order of
  things: they take place, in truth, with more or less promptitude or
  slowness, according to the nature, the condition, or the situation
  of the objects; nevertheless they are wrought in some time or other.

  "To nature, time is nothing, and it never presents a difficulty; she
  always has it at her disposal, and it is for her a means without
  limit, with which she has made the greatest as well as the least
  things.

  "The changes to which everything in this world is subjected are
  changes not only of form and of nature, but they are changes also of
  bulk, and even of situation.

  "All the considerations stated in the preceding chapters should
  convince us that nothing on the surface of the terrestrial globe is
  immutable. They teach us that the vast ocean which occupies so great
  a part of the surface of our globe cannot have its bed constantly
  fixed in the same place; that the dry or exposed parts of this
  surface themselves undergo perpetual changes in their condition, and
  that they are in turn successively invaded and abandoned by the sea.

  "There is, indeed, every evidence that these enormous masses of
  water continually displace themselves, both their bed and their
  limits.

  "In truth these displacements, which are never interrupted, are in
  general only made with extreme and almost inappreciable slowness,
  but they are in ceaseless operation, and with such constancy that
  the ocean bottom, which necessarily loses on one side while it gains
  on another, has already, without doubt, spread over not only once,
  but even several times, every point of the surface of the globe.

  "If it is thus, if each point of the surface of the terrestrial
  globe has been in turn dominated by the seas--that is to say, has
  contributed to form the bed of those immense masses of water which
  constitute the ocean--it should result (1) that the insensible but
  uninterrupted transfer of the bed of the ocean over the whole
  surface of the globe has given place to deposits of the remains of
  marine animals which we should find in a fossil state; (2) that this
  translation of the ocean basin should be the reason why the dry
  portions of the earth are always more elevated than the level of the
  sea; so that the old ocean bed should become exposed without being
  elevated above the sea, and without consequently giving rise to the
  formation of mountains which we observe in so many different regions
  of the naked parts of our globe."

Thus littoral shells of many genera, such as Pectens, Tellinæ, cockle
shells, turban shells (_sabots_), etc., madrepores and other littoral
polyps, the bones of marine or of amphibious animals which have lived
near the sea, and which occur as fossils, are then unimpeachable
monuments of the sojourn of the sea on the points of the dry parts of
the globe where we observe their deposits, and besides these occur
deep-water forms. "Thus the encrinites, the belemnites, the
orthoceratites, the ostracites, the terebratules, etc., all animals
which habitually live at the bottom, found for the most part among the
fossils deposited on the point of the globe in question, are
unimpeachable witnesses which attest that this same place was once part
of the bottom or great depths of the sea." He then attempts to prove,
and does so satisfactorily, that the shells he refers to are what he
calls deep-water (pélagiennes). He proves the truth of his thesis by the
following facts:

  1. We are already familiar with a marine Gryphæa, and different
  Terebratulæ, also marine shell-fish, which do not, however, live
  near shore. 2. Also the greatest depth which has been reached with
  the rake or the dredge is not destitute of molluscs, since we find
  there a great number which only live at this depth, and without
  instruments to reach and bring them up we should know nothing of the
  _cones_, _olives_, Mitra, many species of Murex, Strombus, etc. 3.
  Finally, since the discovery of a living Encrinus, drawn up on a
  sounding line from a great depth, and where lives the animal or
  polyp in question, it is not only possible to assure ourselves that
  at this depth there are other living animals, but on the contrary we
  are strongly bound to think that other species of the same genus,
  and probably other animals of different genera, also live at the
  same depths. All this leads one to admit, with Bruguière,[78] the
  existence of deep-water shell-fish and polyps, which, like him, I
  distinguish from littoral shells and polyps.

  "The two sorts of monuments of which I have above spoken, namely,
  littoral and deep-sea fossils, may be, and often should be, found
  separated by different beds in the same bank or in the same
  mountains, since they have been deposited there at very different
  epochs. But they may often be found mixed together, because the
  movements of the water, the currents, submarine volcanoes, etc.,
  have overturned the beds, yet some regular deposits in water always
  tranquil would be left in quite distant beds.... Every dry part of
  the earth's surface, when the presence or the abundance of marine
  fossils prove that formerly the sea has remained in that place, has
  necessarily twice received, for a single incursion of the sea,
  littoral shells, and once deep-sea shells, in three different
  deposits--this will not be disputed. But as such an incursion of the
  sea can only be accomplished by a period of immense duration, it
  follows that the littoral shells deposited at the first sojourn of
  the edge of the sea, and constituting the first deposit, have been
  destroyed--that is to say, have not been preserved to the present
  time; while the deep-water shells form the second deposit, and there
  the littoral shells of the third deposit are, in fact, the only ones
  which now exist, and which constitute the fossils that we see."

He again asserts that these deposits could not be the result of any
sudden catastrophe, because of the necessarily long sojourn of the sea
to account for the extensive beds of fossil shells, the remains of
"infinitely multiplied generations of shelled animals which have lived
in this place, and have there successively deposited their débris." He
therefore supposes that these remains, "continually heaped up, have
formed these shell banks, become fossilized after the lapse of
considerable time, and in which it is often possible to distinguish
different beds." He then continues his line of anti-catastrophic
reasoning, and we must remember that in his time facts in biology and
geology were feebly grasped, and scientific reasoning or induction was
in its infancy.

  "I would again inquire how, in the supposition of a universal
  catastrophe, there could have been preserved an infinity of delicate
  shells which the least shock would break, but of which we now find a
  great number uninjured among other fossils. How also could it happen
  that bivalve shells, with which calcareous rocks and even those
  changed into a silicious condition are interlarded, should be all
  still provided with their two valves, as I have stated, if the
  animals of these shells had not lived in these places?

  "There is no doubt but that the remains of so many molluscs, that so
  many shells deposited and consequently changed into fossils, and
  most of which were totally destroyed before their substance became
  silicified, furnished a great part of the calcareous matter which we
  observe on the surface and in the upper beds of the earth.

  "Nevertheless there is in the sea, for the formation of calcareous
  matter, a cause which is greater than shelled molluscs, which is
  consequently still more powerful, and to which must be referred
  ninety-nine hundredths, and indeed more, of the calcareous matter
  occurring in nature. This cause, so important to consider, is the
  existence of _coralligenous polyps_, which we might therefore call
  _testaceous polyps_, because, like the testaceous molluscs, these
  polyps have the faculty of forming, by a transudation or a continual
  secretion of their bodies, the stony and calcareous polypidom on
  which they live.

  "In truth these polyps are animals so small that a single one only
  forms a minute quantity of calcareous matter. But in this case what
  nature does not obtain in any volume or in quantity from any one
  individual, she simply receives by the number of animals in
  question, through the enormous multiplicity of these animals, and
  their astonishing fecundity--namely, by the wonderful faculty they
  have of promptly regenerating, of multiplying in a short time their
  generations successively, and rapidly accumulating; finally, by the
  total amount of reunion of the products of these numerous little
  animals.

  "Moreover, it is a fact now well known and well established that the
  coralligenous polyps, namely, this great family of animals with
  coral stocks, such as the millepores, the madrepores, astrææ,
  meandrinæ, etc., prepare on a great scale at the bottom of the sea,
  by a continual secretion of their bodies, and as the result of their
  enormous multiplication and their accumulated generations, the
  greatest part of the calcareous matter which exists. The numerous
  coral stocks which these animals produce, and whose bulk and numbers
  perpetually increase, form in certain places islands of considerable
  extent, fill up extensive bays, gulfs, and roadsteads; in a word,
  close harbors, and entirely change the condition of coasts.

  "These enormous banks of madrepores and millepores, heaped upon each
  other, covered and intermingled with serpulæ, different kinds of
  oysters, patellæ, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their base,
  form irregular mountains of an almost limitless extent.

  "But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the sea has left
  the places where these immense deposits are laid down, then the slow
  but combined alteration that these great masses undergo, left
  uncovered and exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, and
  a variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils and
  destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, which is the readiest
  to decompose. This alteration, which the enormous masses of the
  corals in question continued to undergo, caused their structure to
  gradually disappear, and their great porosity unceasingly diminished
  the parts of these stony masses by displacing and again bringing
  together the molecules composing them, so that, undergoing a new
  aggregation, these calcareous molecules obtained a number of points
  of contact, and constituted harder and more compact masses. It
  finally results that instead of the original masses of madrepores
  and millepores there occurs only masses of a compact calcareous
  rock, which modern mineralogists have improperly called _primitive
  limestone_, because, seeing in it no traces of shells or corals,
  they have mistaken these stony masses for deposits of a matter
  primitively existing in nature."

He then reiterates the view that these deposits of marble and
limestones, often forming mountain ranges, could not have been the
result of a universal catastrophe, and in a very modern way goes on to
specify what the limits of catastrophism are. The only catastrophes
which a naturalist can reasonably admit as having taken place are
partial or local ones, those dependent on causes acting in isolated
places, such as the disturbances which are caused by volcanic eruptions,
by earthquakes, by local inundations, by violent storms, etc. These
catastrophes are with reason admissible, because we observe their
analogues, and because we know that they often happen. He then gives
examples of localities along the coast of France, as at Manche, where
there are ranges of high hills made up of limestones containing Gryphææ,
ammonites, and other deep-water shells.

In the conclusion of the chapter, after stating that the ocean has
repeatedly covered the greater part of the earth, he then claims that
"the displacement of the sea, producing a constantly variable
inequality in the mass of the terrestrial radii, has necessarily caused
the earth's centre of gravity to vary, as also its two poles.[79]
Moreover, since it appears that this variation, very irregular as it is,
not being subjected to any limits, it is very probable that each point
of the surface of the planet we inhabit is really in the case of
successively finding itself subjected to different climates." He then
exclaims in eloquent, profound, and impassioned language:

  "How curious it is to see that such suppositions receive their
  confirmation from the consideration of the state of the earth's
  surface and of its external crust, from that of the nature of
  certain fossils found in abundance in the northern regions of the
  earth, and whose analogues now live in warm climates; finally, in
  that of the ancient astronomical observations of the Egyptians.

  "Oh, how great is the antiquity of the terrestrial globe, and how
  small are the ideas of those who attribute to the existence of this
  globe a duration of six thousand and some hundred years since its
  origin down to our time!

  "The physico-naturalist and the geologist in this respect see things
  very differently; for if they have given the matter the slightest
  consideration--the one, the nature of fossils spread in such great
  numbers in all the exposed parts of the globe, both in elevated
  situations and at considerable depths in the earth; the other, the
  number and disposition of the beds, as also the nature and order of
  the materials which compose the external crust of this globe studied
  throughout a great part of its thickness and in the mountain
  masses--have they not had opportunities to convince themselves that
  the antiquity of this same globe is so great that it is absolutely
  beyond the power of man to appreciate it in an adequate way!

  "Assuredly our chronologies do not extend back very far, and they
  could only have been made by propping them up by fables. Traditions,
  both oral and written, become necessarily lost, and it is in the
  nature of things that this should be so.

  "Even if the invention of printing had been more ancient than it is,
  what would have resulted at the end of ten thousand years?
  Everything changes, everything becomes modified, everything becomes
  lost or destroyed. Every living language insensibly changes its
  idiom; at the end of a thousand years the writings made in any
  language can only be read with difficulty; after two thousand years
  none of these writings will be understood. Besides wars, vandalism,
  the greediness of tyrants and of those who guide religious opinions,
  who always rely on the ignorance of the human race and are supported
  by it, how many are the causes, as proved by history and the
  sciences, of epochs after epochs of revolutions, which have more or
  less completely destroyed them.

  "How many are the causes by which man loses all trace of that which
  has existed, and cannot believe nor even conceive of the immense
  antiquity of the earth he inhabits!

  "How great will yet seem this antiquity of the terrestrial globe in
  the eyes of man when he shall form a just idea of the origin of
  living bodies, as also of the causes of the development and of the
  gradual process of perfection of the organization of these bodies,
  and especially when it will be conceived that, time and favorable
  circumstances having been necessary to give existence to all the
  living species such as we actually see, he is himself the last
  result and the actual maximum of this process of perfecting, the
  limit (_terme_) of which, if it exists, cannot be known."

In the fourth chapter of the book there is less to interest the reader,
since the author mainly devotes it to a reiteration of the ideas of his
earlier works on physics and chemistry. He claims that the minerals and
rocks composing the earth's crust are all of organic origin, including
even granite. The thickness of this crust he thinks, in the absence of
positive knowledge, to be from three to four leagues, or from nine to
twelve miles.

After describing the mode of formation of minerals, including agates,
flint, geodes, etc., he discusses the process of fossilization by
molecular changes, silicious particles replacing the vegetable or animal
matter, as in the case of fossil wood.

While, then, the products of animals such as corals and molluscs are
limestones, those of vegetables are humus and clay; and all of these
deposits losing their less fixed principles pass into a silicious
condition, and end by being reduced to quartz, which is the earthy
element in its purest form. The salts, pyrites, and metals only differ
from other minerals by the different circumstances under which they were
accumulated, in their different proportions, and in their much greater
amount of carbonic or acidific fire.

Regarding granite, which, he says, naturalists very erroneously consider
as _primitive_, he begins by observing that it is only by conjecture
that we should designate as primitive any matter whatever. He recognizes
the fact that granite forms the highest mountains, which are generally
arranged in more or less regular chains. But he strangely assumes that
the constituents of granite, _i.e._, felspar, quartz, and mica, did not
exist before vegetables, and that these minerals and their aggregation
into granite were the result of slow deposition in the ocean.[80] He
goes so far as to assert that the porphyritic rocks were not thus formed
in the sea, but that they are the result of deposits carried down by
streams, especially torrents flowing down from mountains. Gneiss, he
thinks, resulted from the detritus of granitic rocks, by means of an
inappreciable cement, and formed in a way analogous to that of the
porphyries.

Then he attacks the notion of Leibnitz of a liquid globe, in which all
mineral substances were precipitated tumultuously, replacing this idea
by his chemical notion of the origin of the crystalline and volcanic
rocks.

He is on firmer ground in explaining the origin of chalk and clay, for
the rocks of the region about Paris, with which he was familiar, are
sedimentary and largely of organic origin.

In the "Addition" (pp. 173-188) following the fourth chapter Lamarck
states that, allowing for the variations in the intensity of the cause
of elevation of the land as the result of the accumulations of organic
matter, he thinks he can, without great error, consider the mean rate as
324 mm. (1 foot) a century. As a concrete example it has been observed,
he says, that one river valley has risen a foot higher in the space of
eleven years.

Passing by his speculations on the displacement of the poles of the
earth, and on the elevations of the equatorial regions, which will
dispense with the necessity of considering the earth as originally in a
liquid condition, he allows that "the terrestrial globe is not at all a
body entirely and truly solid, but that it is a combination (_réunion_)
of bodies more or less solid, displaceable in their mass or in their
separate parts, and among which there is a great number which undergo
continual changes in condition."

It was, of course, too early in the history of geology for Lamarck to
seize hold of the fact, now so well known, that the highest mountain
ranges, as the Alps, Pyrenees, the Caucasus, Atlas ranges, and the
Mountains of the Moon (he does not mention the Himalayas) are the
youngest, and that the lowest mountains, especially those in the more
northern parts of the continents, are but the roots or remains of what
were originally lofty mountain ranges. His idea, on the contrary, was,
that the high mountain chains above mentioned were the remains of
ancient equatorial elevations, which the fresh waters, for an enormous
multitude of ages, were in the process of progressively eroding and
wearing down.

What he says of the formation of coal is noteworthy:

  "Wherever there are masses of fossil wood buried in the earth, the
  enormous subterranean beds of coal that are met with in different
  countries, these are the witnesses of ancient encroachments of the
  sea, over a country covered with forests; it has overturned them,
  buried them in deposits of clay, and then after a time has
  withdrawn."

In the appendix he briefly rehearses the laws of evolution as stated in
his opening lecture of his course given in the year IX. (1801), and
which would be the subject of his projected work, _Biologie_, the third
and last part of the Terrestrial Physics, a work which was not
published, but which was probably comprised in his _Philosophie
zoologique_.

The _Hydrogéologie_ closes with a "_Mémoire sur la matière du feu_" and
one "_sur la matière du son_," both being reprinted from the _Journal de
Physique_.


FOOTNOTES:

[60] _Evolution in Biology_, in _Darwiniana_, New York, 1896, p. 212.

[61] _Principles of Geology_.

[62] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, 8th edit., p. 22.

[63] Quoted from Flourens' _Éloge Historique de Georges Cuvier_,
Hoefer's edition. Paris, 1854.

[64] _Remarques sur les Coquilles fossiles de quelques Cantons de la
Touraine_. Mém. Acad. Sc. Paris, 1720, pp. 400-417.

[65] _Éloge Historique de Werner_, p. 113.

[66] _History of Civilization_, i. p. 627.

[67] _France under Louis XV._, p. 359.

[68] _France under Louis XV._, p. 360.

[69] See vol. iii. of his _Mémoires sur differentes Parties des Sciences
et des Arts_, pp. 209-403. Geikie does not give the date of the third
volume of his work, but it was apparently about 1771, as vol. ii. was
published in 1770. I copy Geikie's account of Guettard's observations
often in his own words.

[70] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_.

[71] Geikie states that the doctrine of the origin of valleys by the
erosive action of the streams which flow through them, though it has
been credited to various writers, was first clearly taught from actual
concrete examples by Desmarest. _L. c._, p. 65.

[72] Jameson's _Cuvier's Theory of the Earth_, New York, 1818.

[73] J. G. Lehmann of Berlin, in 1756, first formally stated that there
was some regular succession in the strata, his observations being based
on profiles of the Hartz and the Erzgebirge. He proposed the names
Zechstein, Kupferschiefer, rothes Todtliegendes, which still linger in
German treatises. G. C. Fuchsel (1762) wrote on the stratigraphy of the
coal measures, the Permian and the later systems in Thuringia. (Zittel.)

[74] James Hutton was born at Edinburgh, June 3, 1726, where he died
March 26, 1797.

[75] Quoted from Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, eighth edit., p. 17.

[76] _Bulletin Société Imp. des Naturalistes De Moscou_, xlii. (1869),
pt. 1. p. 4, quoted from Geikie's _Geology_, p. 276, footnote.

[77] Suess also, in his _Anlitz_ etc., substitutes for the folding of
the earth's crust by tangential pressure the subsidence by gravity of
portions of the crust, their falling in obliging the sea to follow.
Suess also explains the later transgressions of the sea by the
progressive accumulation of sediments which raise the level of the sea
by their deposition at its bottom. Thus he believes that the true factor
in the deformation of the globe is vertical descent, and not, as Neumayr
had previously thought, the folding of the crust.

[78] Bruguière (1750-1799), a conchologist of great merit. His
descriptions of new species were clear and precise. In his paper on the
coal mines of the mountains of Cevennes (Choix de Mémoires d'Hist. Nat.,
1792) he made the first careful study of the coal formation in the
Cevennes, including its beds of coal, sandstone, and shale. A. de
Jussieu had previously supposed that the immense deposits of coal were
due to sudden cataclysms or to one of the great revolutions of the earth
during which the seas of the East or West Indies, having been driven as
far as into Europe, had deposited on its soil all these exotic plants to
be found there, after having torn them up on their way.

But Bruguière, who is to be reckoned among the early uniformitarians,
says that "the capacity for observation is now too well-informed to be
contented with such a theory," and he explains the formation of coal
deposits in the following essentially modern way:

"The stores of coal, although formed of vegetable substances, owe their
origin to the sea. It is when the places where we now find them were
covered by its waters that these prodigious masses of vegetable
substances were gathered there, and this operation of nature, which
astonishes the imagination, far from depending on any extraordinary
commotion of the globe, seems, on the contrary, to be only the result of
time, of an order of things now existing, and especially that of slow
changes" (i, pp. 116, 117).

The proofs he brings forward are the horizontality of the beds, both of
coal and deposits between them, the marine shells in the sandstones, the
fossil fishes intermingled with the plant remains in the shales;
moreover, some of the coal deposits are covered by beds of limestone
containing marine shells which lived in the sea at a very great depth.
The alternation of these beds, the great mass of vegetable matter which
lived at small distances from the soil which conceals them, and the
occurrence of these beds so high up, show that at this time Europe was
almost wholly covered by the sea, the summits of the Alps and the
Pyrenees being then, as he says, so many small islands in the midst of
the ocean. He also intimates that the climate when these ferns ("bamboo"
and "banana") lived was warmer than that of Europe at present.

In this essay, then, we see a great advance in correctness of geological
observation and reasoning over any previous writers, while its
suggestions were appreciated and adopted by Lamarck.

[79] Hooke had previously, in order to explain the presence of tropical
fossil shells in England, indulged in a variety of speculations
concerning changes in the position of the axis of the earth's rotation,
"a shifting of the earth's centre of gravity analogous to the
revolutions of the magnetic pole, etc." (Lyell's _Principles_). See also
p. 132.

[80] Cuvier, in a footnote to his _Discours_ (sixth edition, p. 49), in
referring to this view, states that it originated with Rodig (_La
Physique_, p. 106, Leipzig, 1801) and De Maillet (_Telliamed_, tome ii.,
p. 169), "also an infinity of new German works." He adds: "M. de Lamarck
has recently expanded this system in France at great length in his
_Hydrogéologie_ and in his _Philosophie zoologique_." Is the Rodig
referred to Ih. Chr. Rodig, author of _Beiträge zur Naturwissenschaft_
(Leipzig, 1803. 8^o)? We have been unable to discover this view in De
Maillet; Cuvier's reference to p. 169 is certainly incorrect, as quite a
different subject is there discussed.




CHAPTER IX

LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF INVERTEBRATE PALÆONTOLOGY


It was fortunate for palæontology that the two greatest zoölogists of
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries,
Lamarck and Cuvier, lived in the Paris basin, a vast cemetery of corals,
shells, and mammals; and not far from extensive deposits of cretaceous
rocks packed with fossil invertebrates. With their then unrivalled
knowledge of recent or existing forms, they could restore the
assemblages of extinct animals which peopled the cretaceous ocean, and
more especially the tertiary seas and lakes.

Lamarck drew his supplies of tertiary shells from the tertiary beds
situated within a radius of from twenty-five to thirty miles from the
centre of Paris, and chiefly from the village of Grignon, about ten
miles west of Paris, beyond Versailles, and still a rich collecting
ground for the students of the Museum and Sorbonne. He acknowledges the
aid received from Defrance,[81] who had already collected at Grignon
five hundred species of fossil shells, three-fourths of which, he says,
had not then been described.

Lamarck's first essay ("_Sur les fossiles_") on fossils in general was
published at the end of his _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_
(pp. 401-411), in 1801, a year before the publication of the
_Hydrogéologie_. "I give the name _fossils_," he says, "to remains of
living beings, changed by their long sojourn in the earth or under
water, but whose forms and structure are still recognizable.

  "From this point of view, the bones of vertebrate animals and the
  remains of testaceous molluscs, of certain crustacea, of many
  echinoderms, coral polyps, when after having been for a long time
  buried in the earth or hidden under the sea, will have undergone an
  alteration which, while changing their substance, has nevertheless
  destroyed neither their forms, their figures, nor the special
  features of their structures."

He goes on to say that the animal parts having been destroyed, the shell
remains, being composed of calcareous matter. This shell, then, has lost
its lustre, its colors, and often even its nacre, if it had any; and in
this altered condition it is usually entirely white. In some cases where
the shells have remained for a long period buried in a mud of some
particular color, the shell receives the same color.

  "In France, the fossil shells of Courtagnon near Reims, Grignon near
  Versailles, of what was formerly Touraine, etc., are almost all
  still in this calcareous state, having more or less completely lost
  their animal parts--namely, their lustre, their peculiar colors, and
  their nacre.

  "Other fossils have undergone such an alteration that not only have
  they lost their animal portion, but their substance has been changed
  into a silicious matter. I give to this second kind of fossil the
  name of _silicious fossils_, and examples of this kind are the
  different oysters ('des ostracites'), many terebratulæ ('des
  terebratulites'), trigoniæ, ammonites, echinites, encrinites, etc.

  "The fossils of which I have just spoken are in part buried in the
  earth, and others lie scattered over its surface. They occur in all
  the exposed parts of our globe, in the middle even of the largest
  continents, and, what is very remarkable, they occur on mountains up
  to very considerable altitudes. In many places the fossils buried in
  the earth form banks extending several leagues in length."[82]

Conchologists, he says, did not care to collect or study fossil shells,
because they had lost their lustre, colors, and beauty, and they were
rejected from collections on this account as "dead" and uninteresting.
"But," he adds, "since attention has been drawn to the fact that these
fossils are extremely valuable _monuments_ for the study of the
revolutions which have taken place in different regions of the earth,
and of the changes which the beings living there have themselves
successively undergone (in my lectures I have always insisted on these
considerations), consequently the search for and study of fossils have
excited special interest, and are now the objects of the greatest
interest to naturalists."

Lamarck then combats the views of several naturalists, undoubtedly
referring to Cuvier, that the fossils are extinct species, and that the
earth has passed through a general catastrophe (_un bouleversement
universel_) with the result that a multitude of species of animals and
plants were consequently absolutely lost or destroyed, and remarks in
the following telling and somewhat derisive language:

  "A universal catastrophe (_bouleversement_) which necessarily
  regulates nothing, mixes up and disperses everything, is a very
  convenient way to solve the problem for those naturalists who wish
  to explain everything, and who do not take the trouble to observe
  and investigate the course followed by nature as respects its
  production and everything which constitutes its domain. I have
  already elsewhere said what should be thought of this so-called
  universal overturning of the globe; I return to fossils.

  "It is very true that, of the great quantity of fossil shells
  gathered in the different countries of the earth, there are yet but
  a very small number of species whose living or marine analogues are
  known. Nevertheless, although this number may be very small, which
  no one will deny, it is enough to suppress the universality
  announced in the proposition cited above.

  "It is well to remark that among the fossil shells whose marine or
  living analogues are not known, there are many which have a form
  closely allied to shells of the same genera known to be now living
  in the sea. However, they differ more or less, and cannot be
  rigorously regarded as the same species as those known to be living,
  since they do not perfectly resemble them. These are, it is said,
  extinct species.

  "I am convinced that it is possible never to find, among fresh or
  marine shells, any shells perfectly similar to the fossil shells of
  which I have just spoken. I believe I know the reason; I proceed to
  succinctly indicate, and I hope that it will then be seen, that
  although many fossil shells are different from all the marine
  shells known, this does not prove that the species of these shells
  are extinct, but only that these species have changed as the result
  of time, and that actually they have different forms from those
  individuals whose fossil remains we have found."

Then he goes on in the same strain as in the opening discourse, saying
that nothing terrestrial remains constant, that geological changes are
continually occurring, and that these changes produce in living
organisms a diversity of habits, a different mode of life, and as the
result modifications or developments in their organs and in the shape of
their parts.

  "We should still realize that all the modifications which the
  organism undergoes in its structure and form as the result of the
  influence of circumstances which would influence this being, are
  propagated by generation, and that after a long series of ages not
  only will it be able to form new species, new genera, and even new
  orders, but also each species will even necessarily vary in its
  organization and in its forms.

  "We should not be more surprised then if, among the numerous fossils
  which occur in all the dry parts of the globe and which offer us the
  remains of so many animals which have formerly existed, there should
  be found so few of which we know the living analogues. If there is
  in this, on the contrary, anything which should astonish us, it is
  to find that among these numerous fossil remains of beings which
  have lived there should be known to us some whose analogues still
  exist, from a germ to a vast multitude of living forms, of different
  and ascending grades of perfection, ending in man.

  "This fact, as our collection of fossils proves, should lead us to
  suppose that the fossil remains of the animals whose living
  analogues we know are the less ancient fossils. The species to which
  each of them belongs had doubtless not yet time to vary in any of
  its forms.

  "We should, then, never expect to find among the living species the
  totality of those that we meet with in the fossil state, and yet we
  cannot conclude that any species can really be lost or extinct. It
  is undoubtedly possible that among the largest animals some species
  have been destroyed as a result of the multiplication of man in the
  regions where they live. But this conjecture cannot be based on the
  consideration of fossils alone; we can only form an opinion in this
  respect when all the inhabited parts of the globe will have become
  perfectly known."

Lamarck did not have, as we now have, a knowledge of the geological
succession of organic forms. The comparatively full and detailed view
which we possess of the different vast assemblages of plant and animal
life which have successively peopled the surface of our earth is a
vision on which his eyes never rested. His slight, piecemeal glimpse of
the animal life of the Paris Basin, and of the few other extinct forms
then known, was all he had to depend upon or reason from. He was not
disposed to believe that the thread of life once begun in the earliest
times could be arbitrarily broken by catastrophic means; that there was
no relation whatever between the earlier and later faunas. He utterly
opposed Cuvier's view that species once formed could ever be lost or
become extinct without ancestors or descendants. He on the contrary
believed that species underwent a slow modification, and that the fossil
forms are the ancestors of the animals now living. Moreover, Lamarck was
the inventor of the first genealogical tree; his phylogeny, in the
second volume of his _Philosophie zoologique_ (p. 463), proves that he
realized that the forms leading up to the existing ones were practically
extinct, as we now use the word. Lamarck in theory was throughout, as
Houssay well says, at one with us who are now living, but a century
behind us in knowledge of the facts needed to support his theory.

In this first published expression of his views on palæontology, we find
the following truths enumerated on which the science is based: (1) The
great length of geological time; (2) The continuous existence of animal
life all through the different geological periods without sudden total
extinctions and as sudden recreations of new assemblages; (3) The
physical environment remaining practically the same throughout in
general, but with (4) continual gradual but not catastrophic changes in
the relative distribution of land and sea and other modifications in the
physical geography, changes which (5) caused corresponding changes in
the habitat, and (6) consequently in the habits of the living beings; so
that there has been all through geological history a slow modification
of life-forms.

Thus Lamarck's idea of creation is _evolutional_ rather than
_uniformitarian_. There was, from his point of view, not simply a
uniform march along a dead level, but a progression, a change from the
lower or generalized to the higher or specialized--an evolution or
unfolding of organic life. In his effort to disprove catastrophism he
failed to clearly see that species, as we style them, became extinct,
though really the changes in the species practically amounted to
extinctions of the earlier species as such. The little that was known
to Lamarck at the time he wrote, prevented his knowing that species
became extinct, as we say, or recognizing the fact that while some
species, genera, and even orders may rise, culminate, and die, others
are modified, while a few persist from one period to another. He did,
however, see clearly that, taking plant and animal life as a whole, it
underwent a slow modification, the later forms being the descendants of
the earlier; and this truth is the central one of modern palæontology.

Lamarck's first memoir on fossil shells, in which he described many new
species, was published in 1802, after the appearance of his
_Hydrogéologie_, to which he refers. It was the first of a series of
descriptive papers, which appeared at intervals from 1802 to 1806. He
does not fail to open the series of memoirs with some general remarks,
which prove his broad, philosophic spirit, that characterizing the
founder of a new science. He begins by saying that the fossil forms have
their analogues in the tropical seas. He claims that there was evident
proof that these molluscs could not have lived in a climate like that of
places in which they now occur, instancing _Nautilius pompilius_, which
now lives in the seas of warm countries; also the presence of exotic
ferns, palms, fossil amber, fossil gum elastic, besides the occurrence
of fossil crocodiles and elephants both in France and Germany.[83]

Hence there have been changes of climate since these forms flourished,
and, he adds, the intervals between these changes of climate were
stationary periods, whose duration was practically without limit. He
assigns a duration to these stationary or intermediate periods of from
three to five million years each--"a duration infinitely small relative
to those required for all the changes of the earth's surface."

He refers in an appreciative way to the first special treatise on fossil
shells ever published, that of an Englishman named Brander,[84] who
collected the shells "out of the cliffs by the sea-coast between Christ
Church and Lymington, but more especially about the cliffs by the
village of Hordwell," where the strata are filled with these fossils.
Lamarck, working upon collections of tertiary shells from Grignon and
also from Courtagnon near Reims, with the aid of Brander's work showed
that these beds, not known to be Eocene, extended into Hampshire,
England; thus being the first to correlate by their fossils, though in a
limited way to be sure, the tertiary beds of France with those of
England.

How he at a later period (1805) regarded fossils and their relations to
geology may be seen in his later memoirs, _Sur les Fossiles des environs
de Paris_.[85]

  "The determination of the characters, both generic and specific, of
  animals of which we find the fossil remains in almost all the dry
  parts of the continents and large islands of our globe will be, from
  several points of view, a thing extremely useful to the progress of
  natural history. At the outset, the more this determination is
  advanced, the more will it tend to complete our knowledge in regard
  to the species which exist in nature and of those which have
  existed, as it is true that some of them have been lost, as we have
  reason to believe, at least as concerns the large animals. Moreover,
  this same determination will be singularly advantageous for the
  advancement of geology; for the fossil remains in question may be
  considered, from their nature, their condition, and their situation,
  as authentic monuments of the revolutions which the surface of our
  globe has undergone, and they can throw a strong light on the nature
  and character of these revolutions."

This series of papers on the fossils of the Paris tertiary basin
extended through the first eight volumes of the _Annales_, and were
gathered into a volume published in 1806. In his descriptions his work
was comparative, the fossil species being compared with their living
representatives. The thirty plates, containing 483 figures representing
184 species (exclusive of those figured by Brard), were afterwards
published, with the explanations, but not the descriptions, as a
separate volume in 1823.[86] This (the text published in 1806) is the
first truly scientific palæontological work ever published, preceding
Cuvier's _Ossemens fossiles_ by six years.

When we consider Lamarck's--at his time unrivalled--knowledge of
molluscs, his philosophical treatment of the relations of the study of
fossils to geology, his correlation of the tertiary beds of England with
those of France, and his comparative descriptions of the fossil forms
represented by the existing shells, it seems not unreasonable to regard
him as the founder of invertebrate palæontology, as Cuvier was of
vertebrate or mammalian palæontology.

We have entered the claim that Lamarck was one of the chief founders of
palæontology, and the first French author of a genuine, detailed
palæontological treatise. It must be admitted, therefore, that the
statement generally made that Cuvier was the founder of this science
should be somewhat modified, though he may be regarded as the chief
founder of vertebrate palæontology.

In this field, however, Cuvier had his precursors not only in Germany
and Holland, but also in France.

Our information as to the history of the rise of vertebrate palæontology
is taken from Blainville's posthumous work entitled _Cuvier et Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire_.[87] In this work, a severe critical and perhaps not
always sufficiently appreciative account of Cuvier's character and work,
we find an excellent history of the first beginnings of vertebrate
palæontology. Blainville has little or nothing to say of the first steps
in invertebrate palæontology, and, singularly enough, not a word of
Lamarck's principles and of his papers and works on fossil shells--a
rather strange oversight, because he was a friend and admirer of
Lamarck, and succeeded him in one of the two departments of
invertebrates created at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle after Lamarck's
death.

Blainville, who by the way was the first to propose the word
_palæontology_, shows that the study of the great extinct mammals had
for forty years been held in great esteem in Germany, before Faujas and
Cuvier took up the subject in France. Two Frenchmen, also before 1789,
had examined mammalian bones. Thus Bernard de Jussieu knew of the
existence in a fossil state of the teeth of the hippopotamus.
Guettard[88] published in 1760 a memoir on the fossil bones of Aix en
Provence. Lamanon (1780-1783)[89] in a beautiful memoir described a
head, almost entire, found in the gypsum beds of Paris. Daubenton had
also slightly anticipated Cuvier's law of correlation, giving "a very
remarkable example of the mode of procedure to follow in order to solve
these kinds of questions by the way in which he had recognized a bone of
a giraffe whose skeleton he did not possess" (De Blainville).

  "But it was especially in Germany, in the hands of Pallas, Camper,
  Blumenbach, anatomists and physicians, also those of Walch, Merck,
  Hollmann, Esper, Rosenmüller, and Collini (who was not, however,
  occupied with natural history), of Beckman, who had even discussed
  the subject in a general way (_De reductione rerum fossilium ad
  genera naturalia prototyporum--Nov. Comm. Soc. Scient.
  Goettingensis_, t. ii.), that palæontology applied to quadrupeds had
  already settled all that pertained to the largest species."

As early as 1764, Hollmann[90] had admirably identified the bones of a
rhinoceros found in a bone-deposit of the Hartz, although he had no
skeleton of this animal for comparison.

Pallas, in a series of memoirs dating from 1773, had discovered and
distinguished the species of Siberian elephant or mammoth, the
rhinoceros, and the large species of oxen and buffalo whose bones were
found in such abundance in the quaternary deposits of Siberia; and, as
Blainville says, if he did not distinguish the species, it was because
at this epoch the question of the distinction of the two species of
rhinoceros and of elephants, in the absence of material, could not be
solved. This solution, however, was made by the Dutch anatomist Camper,
in 1777, who had brought together at Amsterdam a collection of skeletons
and skulls of the existing species which enabled him for the first time
to make the necessary comparisons between the extinct and living
species. A few years later (1780) Blumenbach confirmed Camper's
identification, and gave the name of _Elephas primigenius_ to the
Siberian mammoth.

  "Beckman" [says Blainville] "as early as 1772 had even published a
  very good memoir on the way in which we should consider fossil
  organic bodies; he was also the first to propose using the name
  _fossilia_ instead of _petrefacta_, and to name the science which
  studies fossils _Oryctology_. It was also he who admitted that these
  bodies should be studied with reference to the class, order, genus,
  species, as we would do with a living being, and he compared them,
  which he called _prototypes_,[91] with their analogues. He then
  passes in review, following the zoölogical order, the fossils which
  had been discovered by naturalists. He even described one of them as
  a new species, besides citing, with an erudition then rare, all the
  authors and all the works where they were described. He did no more
  than to indicate but not name each species. Thus he was the means of
  soon producing a number of German authors who made little advance
  from lack of anatomical knowledge; but afterwards the task fell into
  the hands of men capable of giving to the newly created palæontology
  a remarkable impulse, and one which since then has not abated."

Blumenbach,[92] the most eminent and all-round German anatomist and
physiologist of his time, one of the founders of anthropology as well as
of palæontology, had meanwhile established the fact that there were two
species of fossil cave-bear, which he named _Ursus spelæus_ and _U.
arctoideus_. He began to publish his _Archæologia telluris_,[93] the
first part of which appeared in 1803.

From Blainville's useful summary we learn that Blumenbach, mainly
limiting his work to the fossils of Hanover, aimed at studying fossils
in order to explain the revolutions of the earth.

  "Hence the order he proposed to follow was not that commonly
  followed in treatises on oryctology, namely, systematic, following
  the classes and the orders of the animal and vegetable kingdom, but
  in a chronological order, in such a way as to show that the classes,
  so far as it was possible to conjecture with any probability, were
  established after or in consequence of the different revolutions of
  the earth.

  "Thus, as we see, all the great questions, more or less insoluble,
  which the study of fossil organic bodies can offer, were raised and
  even discussed by the celebrated professor of Göttingen as early as
  1803, before anything of the sort could have arisen from the essays
  of M. G. Cuvier; the errors of distribution in the classes committed
  by Blumenbach were due to the backward state of geology."

The political troubles of Germany, which also bore heavily upon the
University of Göttingen, probably brought Blumenbach's labors to an end,
for after a second "specimen" of his work, of less importance than the
first, the _Archæologia telluris_ was discontinued.

The French geologist Faujas,[94] who also published several articles on
fossil animals, ceased his labors, and now Cuvier began his memorable
work.

The field of the labors and triumphs of palæontology were now
transferred to France. We have seen that the year 1793, when Lamarck and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire were appointed to fill the new zoölogical chairs,
and the latter had in 1795 called Cuvier from Normandy to Paris, was a
time of renascence of the natural sciences in France. Cuvier began a
course of lectures on comparative anatomy at the Museum of Natural
History. He was more familiar than any one else in France with the
progress in natural science in Germany, and had felt the stimulus
arising from this source; besides, as Blainville stated, he was also
impelled by the questions boldly raised by Faujas in his geological
lectures, who was somewhat of the school of Buffon. Cuvier, moreover,
had at his disposition the collection of skeletons of the Museum, which
was frequently increased by those of the animals which died in the
menagerie. With his knowledge of comparative anatomy, of which, after
Vicq-d'Azyr, he was the chief founder, and with the gypsum quarry of
Montmartre, that rich cemetery of tertiary mammals, to draw from, he had
the whole field before him, and rapidly built up his own vast
reputation and thus added to the glory of France.

His first contribution to palæontology[95] appeared in 1798, in which he
announced his intention of publishing an extended work on fossil bones
of quadrupeds, to restore the skeletons and to compare them with those
now living, and to determine their relations and differences; but, says
Blainville, in the list of thirty or forty species which he enumerates
in his tableau, none was apparently discovered by him, unless it was the
species of "dog" of Montmartre, which he afterward referred to his new
genera Palæotherium and Anaplotherium. In 1801 (le 26 brumaire, an IX.)
he published, by order of the Institut, the programme of a work on
fossil quadrupeds, with an increased number of species; but, as
Blainville states, "It was not until 1804, and in tome iii. of the
_Annales du Muséum_, namely, more than three years after his programme,
that he began his publications by fragments and without any order, while
these publications lasted more than eight years before they were
collected into a general work"; this "_corps d'ouvrage_" being the
_Ossemens fossiles_, which was issued in 1812 in four quarto volumes,
with an atlas of plates.

It is with much interest, then, that we turn to Cuvier's great work,
which brought him such immediate and widespread fame, in order to see
how he treated his subject. His general views are contained in the
preliminary remarks in his well-known "Essay on the Theory of the Earth"
(1812), which was followed in 1821 by his _Discours sur les Révolutions
de la Surface du Globe_.

It was written in a more attractive and vigorous style than the writings
of Lamarck, more elegant, concise, and with less repetition, but it is
destitute of the philosophic grasp, and is not the work of a profound
thinker, but rather of a man of talent who was an industrious collector
and accurate describer of fossil bones, of a high order to be sure, but
analytical rather than synthetical, of one knowing well the value of
carefully ascertained and demonstrated facts, but too cautious, if he
was by nature able to do so, to speculate on what may have seemed to him
too few facts. It is also the work of one who fell in with the current
views of the time as to the general bearing of his discoveries on
philosophy and theology, believing as he did in the universality of the
Noachian deluge.

Like Lamarck, Cuvier independently made use of the comparative method,
the foundation method in palæontology; and Cuvier's well-known "law of
correlation of structures," so well exemplified in the vertebrates, was
a fresh, new contribution to philosophical biology.

In his _Discours_, speaking of the difficulty of determining the bones
of fossil quadrupeds, as compared with fossil shells or the remains of
fishes, he remarks:[96]

  "Happily comparative anatomy possessed a principle which, well
  developed, was capable of overcoming every difficulty; it was that
  of the correlation of forms in organic beings, by means of which
  each kind of organism can with exactitude be recognized by every
  fragment of each of its parts.--Every organized being," he adds,
  "forms an entire system, unique and closed, whose organs mutually
  correspond, and concur in the same definite action by a reciprocal
  reaction. Hence none of these parts can change without the other
  being also modified, and consequently each of them, taken
  separately, indicates and produces (_donne_) all the others.

  "A claw, a shoulder-blade, a condyle, a leg or arm-bone, or any
  other bone separately considered, enables us to discover the kind of
  teeth to which they have belonged; so also reciprocally we may
  determine the form of the other bones from the teeth. Thus,
  commencing our investigation by a careful survey of any one bone by
  itself, a person who is sufficiently master of the laws of organic
  structure can reconstruct the entire animal. The smallest facet of
  bone, the smallest apophysis, has a determinate character, relative
  to the class, the order, the genus, and the species to which it
  belongs, so that even when one has only the extremity of a
  well-preserved bone, he can, with careful examination, assisted by
  analogy and exact comparison, determine all these things as surely
  as if he had before him the entire animal."

Cuvier adds that he has enjoyed every kind of advantage for such
investigations owing to his fortunate situation in the Museum of Natural
History, and that by assiduous researches for nearly thirty years[97]
he has collected skeletons of all the genera and sub-genera of
quadrupeds, with those of many species in certain genera, and several
individuals of certain species. With such means it was easy for him to
multiply his comparisons, and to verify in all their details the
applications of his laws.

Such is the famous law of correlation of parts, of Cuvier. It could be
easily understood by the layman, and its enunciation added vastly to the
popular reputation and prestige of the young science of comparative
anatomy.[98] In his time, and applied to the forms occurring in the
Paris Basin, it was a most valuable, ingenious, and yet obvious method,
and even now is the principal rule the palæontologist follows in
identifying fragments of fossils of any class. But it has its
limitations, and it goes without saying that the more complete the
fossil skeleton of a vertebrate, or the remains of an arthropod, the
more complete will be our conception of the form of the extinct
organism. It may be misleading in the numerous cases of convergence and
of generalized forms which now abound in our palæontological
collections. We can well understand how guarded one must be in working
out the restorations of dinosaurs and fossil birds, of the Permian and
Triassic theromorphs, and the Tertiary creodonts as compared with
existing carnivora.

As the late O. C. Marsh[99] observed:

  "We know to-day that unknown extinct animals cannot be restored from
  a single tooth or claw unless they are very similar to forms already
  known. Had Cuvier himself applied his methods to many forms from
  the early tertiary or older formations he would have failed. If, for
  instance, he had had before him the disconnected fragments of an
  eocene tillodont he would undoubtedly have referred a molar tooth to
  one of his pachyderms, an incisor tooth to a rodent, and a claw bone
  to a carnivore. The tooth of a Hesperornis would have given him no
  possible hint of the rest of the skeleton, nor its swimming feet the
  slightest clue to the ostrich-like sternum or skull. And yet the
  earnest belief in his own methods led Cuvier to some of his most
  important discoveries."

Let us now examine from Cuvier's own words in his _Discours_, not
relying on the statements of his expositors or followers, just what he
taught notwithstanding the clear utterances of his older colleague,
Lamarck, whose views he set aside and either ignored or ridiculed.[100]

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

He at the outset affirms that nature has, like mankind, also had her
intestine wars, and that "the surface of the globe has been much
convulsed by successive revolutions and various catastrophes."

As first proof of the revolutions on the surface of the earth he
instances fossil shells, which in the lowest and most level parts of the
earth are "almost everywhere in such a perfect state of preservation
that even the smallest of them retain their most delicate parts, their
sharpest ridges, and their finest and tenderest processes."

  "We are therefore forcibly led to believe not only that the sea has
  at one period or another covered all our plains, but that it must
  have remained there for a long time and in a state of tranquillity,
  which circumstance was necessary for the formation of deposits so
  extensive, so thick, in part so solid, and filled with the exuviæ of
  aquatic animals."

But the traces of revolutions become still more marked when we ascend a
little higher and approach nearer to the foot of the great mountain
chains. Hence the strata are variously inclined, and at times vertical,
contain shells differing specifically from those of beds on the plains
below, and are covered by horizontal later beds. Thus the sea, previous
to the formation of the horizontal strata, had formed others, which by
some means have been broken, lifted up, and overturned in a thousand
ways. There had therefore been also at least one change in the basin of
that sea which preceded ours; it had also experienced at least one
revolution.

He then gives proofs that such revolutions have been numerous.

  "Thus the great catastrophes which have produced revolutions in the
  basins of the sea were preceded, accompanied, and followed by
  changes in the nature of the fluid and of the substances which it
  held in solution, and when the surface of the seas came to be
  divided by islands and projecting ridges, different changes took
  place in every separate basin."

We now come to the Cuvierian doctrine _par excellence_, one in which he
radically differs from Lamarck's views as to the genetic relations
between the organisms of successive strata.

  "Amid these changes of the general fluid it must have been almost
  impossible for the same kind of animals to continue to live, nor did
  they do so in fact. Their species, and even their genera, change
  with the strata, and although the same species occasionally recur at
  small distances, it is generally the case that the shells of the
  ancient strata have forms peculiar to themselves; that they
  gradually disappear till they are not to be seen at all in the
  recent strata, still less in the existing seas, in which, indeed, we
  never discover their corresponding species, and where several even
  of their genera are not to be found; that, on the contrary, the
  shells of the recent strata resemble, as regards the genus, those
  which still exist in the sea, and that in the last formed and
  loosest of these strata there are some species which the eye of the
  most expert naturalists cannot distinguish from those which at
  present inhabit the ocean.

  "In animal nature, therefore, there has been a succession of changes
  corresponding to those which have taken place in the chemical nature
  of the fluid; and when the sea last receded from our continent its
  inhabitants were not very different from those which it still
  continues to support."

He then refers to successive irruptions and retreats of the sea, "the
final result of which, however, has been a universal depression of the
level of the sea."

  "These repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea have neither been
  slow nor gradual; most of the catastrophes which have occasioned
  them have been sudden."

He then adds his proofs of the occurrence of revolutions before the
existence of living beings. Like Lamarck, Cuvier was a Wernerian, and in
speaking of the older or primitive crystalline rocks which contain no
vestige of fossils, he accepted the view of the German theorist in
geology, that granites forming the axis of mountain chains were formed
in a fluid.

We must give Cuvier the credit of fully appreciating the value of
fossils as being what he calls "historical documents," also for
appreciating the fact that there were a number of revolutions marking
either the incoming or end of a geological period; but as he failed to
perceive the unity of organization in organic beings, and their genetic
relationship, as had been indicated by Lamarck and by Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, so in geological history he did not grasp, as did Lamarck,
the vast extent of geological time, and the general uninterrupted
continuity of geological events. He was analytic, thoroughly believing
in the importance of confining himself to the discovery of facts, and,
considering the multitude of fantastic hypotheses and suggestions of
previous writers of the eighteenth century, this was sound, sensible,
and thoroughly scientific. But unfortunately he did not stop here.
Master of facts concerning the fossil mammals of the Paris Basin, he
also--usually cautious and always a shrewd man of the world--fell into
the error of writing his "theory of the world," and of going to the
extreme length of imagining universal catastrophes where there are but
local ones, a universal Noachian deluge when there was none, and of
assuming that there were at successive periods thoroughgoing total and
sudden extinctions of life, and as sudden recreations. Cuvier was a
natural leader of men, a ready debater, and a clear, forcible writer, a
man of great executive force, but lacking in insight and imagination; he
dominated scientific Paris and France, he was the law-giver and autocrat
of the laboratories of Paris, and the views of quiet, thoughtful,
profound scholars such as Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire were
disdainfully pushed aside, overborne, and the progress of geological
thought was arrested, while, owing to his great prestige, the rising
views of the Lamarckian school were nipped in the bud. Every one, after
the appearance of Cuvier's great work on fossil mammals and of his
_Règne Animal_, was a Cuvierian, and down to the time of Lyell and of
Charles Darwin all naturalists, with only here and there an exception,
were pronounced Cuvierians in biology and geology--catastrophists rather
than uniformitarians. We now, with the increase of knowledge of physical
and historical geology, of the succession of life on the earth, of the
unity of organization pervading that life from monad to man all through
the ages from the Precambrian to the present age, know that there were
vast periods of preparation followed by crises, perhaps geologically
brief, when there were widespread changes in physical geography, which
reacted on the life-forms, rendering certain ones extinct, and modifying
others; but this conception is entirely distinct from the views of
Cuvier and his school,[101] which may, in the light of our present
knowledge, properly be deemed not only totally inadequate, but childish
and fantastic.

Cuvier cites the view of Dolomieu, the well-known geologist and
mineralogist (1770-1801), only, however, to reject it, who went to the
extent of supposing that "tides of seven or eight hundred fathoms have
carried off from time to time the bottom of the ocean, throwing it up in
mountains and hills on the primitive valleys and plains of the
continents" (Dolomieu in _Journal de Physique_).

Cuvier met with objections to his extreme views. In his discourse he
thus endeavors to answer "the following objection" which "has already
been stated against my conclusions":

  "Why may not the non-existing races of mammiferous land quadrupeds
  be mere modifications or varieties of those ancient races which we
  now find in the fossil state, which modifications may have been
  produced by change of climate and other local circumstances, and
  since raised to the present excessive differences by the operation
  of similar causes during a long succession of ages?

  "This objection may appear strong to those who believe in the
  indefinite possibility of change of forms in organized bodies, and
  think that during a succession of ages, and by alternations of
  habits, all the species may change into each other, or one of them
  give birth to all the rest. Yet to these persons the following
  answer may be given from their own system: If the species have
  changed by degrees, as they assume, we ought to find traces of this
  gradual modification. Thus, between the Palæotherium and the species
  of our own days, we should be able to discover some intermediate
  forms; and yet no such discovery has ever been made. Since the
  bowels of the earth have not preserved monuments of this strange
  genealogy, we have a right to conclude that the ancient and now
  extinct species were as permanent in their forms and characters as
  those which exist at present; or, at least, that the catastrophe
  which destroyed them did not have sufficient time for the production
  of the changes that are alleged to have taken place."

Cuvier thus emphatically rejects all idea that any of the tertiary
mammals could have been the ancestral forms of those now existing.

  "From all these well-established facts, there does not seem to be
  the smallest foundation for supposing that the new genera which I
  have discovered or established among extraneous fossils, such as the
  _palæotherium_, _anaplotherium_, _megalonynx_, _mastodon_,
  _pterodactylis_, etc., have ever been the sources of any of our
  present animals, which only differ as far as they are influenced by
  time or climate. Even if it should prove true, which I am far from
  believing to be the case, that the fossil elephants, rhinoceroses,
  elks, and bears do not differ further from the present existing
  species of the same genera than the present races of dogs differ
  among themselves, this would by no means be a sufficient reason to
  conclude that they were of the same species; since the races or
  varieties of dogs have been influenced by the trammels of
  domestication, which these other animals never did and indeed never
  could experience."[102]

The extreme views of Cuvier as to the frequent renewal and extinction of
life were afterward (in 1850) carried out to an exaggerated extent by
D'Orbigny, who maintained that the life of the earth must have become
extinct and again renewed twenty-seven times. Similar views were held by
Agassiz, who, however, maintained the geological succession of animals
and the parallelism between their embryonic development and geological
succession, the two foundation stones of the biogenetic law of Haeckel.
But immediately after the publication of Cuvier's _Ossemens fossiles_,
as early as 1813, Von Schlotheim, the founder of vegetable palæontology,
refused to admit that each set of beds was the result of such a
thoroughgoing revolution.[103]

At a later date Bronn "demonstrated that certain species indeed really
passed from one formation to another, and though stratigraphic
boundaries are often barriers confining the persistence of some form,
still this is not an absolute rule, since the species in nowise appear
in their entirety."[104] At present the persistence of genera like
Saccamina, Lingula, Ceratodus, etc., from one age to another, or even
through two or more geological ages, is well known, while _Atrypa
reticulatus_, a species of world-wide distribution, lived from near the
beginning of the Upper Silurian to the Waverly or beginning of the
Carboniferous age.

Such were the views of the distinguished founder of vertebrate
palæontology. When we compare the _Hydrogéologie_ of Lamarck with
Cuvier's _Discours_, we see, though some erroneous views, some very
fantastic conceptions are held, in common with others of his time, in
regard to changes of level of the land and the origin of the crystalline
rocks, that it did contain the principles upon which modern palæontology
is founded, while those of Cuvier are now in the limbo--so densely
populated--of exploded, ill-founded theories.

Our claim that Lamarck should share with Cuvier the honor of being a
founder of palæontology[105] is substantiated by the philosophic Lyell,
who as early as 1836, in his _Principles of Geology_, expresses the same
view in the following words: "The labors of Cuvier in comparative
osteology, and of Lamarck in recent and fossil shells, had raised these
departments of study to a rank of which they had never previously been
deemed susceptible."

Our distinguished American palæontologist, the late O. C. Marsh, takes
the same view, and draws the following parallel between the two great
French naturalists:

  "In looking back from this point of view, the philosophical breadth
  of Lamarck's conclusions, in comparison with those of Cuvier, is
  clearly evident. The invertebrates on which Lamarck worked offered
  less striking evidence of change than the various animals
  investigated by Cuvier; yet they led Lamarck directly to evolution,
  while Cuvier ignored what was before him on this point, and rejected
  the proof offered by others. Both pursued the same methods, and had
  an abundance of material on which to work, yet the facts observed
  induced Cuvier to believe in catastrophes, and Lamarck in the
  uniform course of nature. Cuvier declared species to be permanent;
  Lamarck, that they were descended from others. Both men stand in the
  first rank in science; but Lamarck was the prophetic genius, half a
  century in advance of his time."[106]


FOOTNOTES:

[81] Although Defrance (born 1759, died in 1850) aided Lamarck in
collecting tertiary shells, his earliest palæontological paper (on
Hipponyx) did not appear until the year 1819.

[82] In a footnote Lamarck refers to an unpublished work, which probably
formed a part of the _Hydrogéologie_, published in the following year.
"_Voyez à ce sujet mon ouvrage intitulé: De l'influence du mouvement des
eaus sur la surface du globe terrestre, et des indices du déplacement
continuel du bassin des mers, ainsi que de son transport successif sur
les différens points de la surface du globe_" (no date).

[83] It should be stated that the first observer to inaugurate the
comparative method was that remarkable forerunner of modern
palæontologists, Steno the Dane, who was for a while a professor at
Padua. In 1669, in his treatise entitled _De Solido intra Solidum
naturaliter contento_, which Lyell translates "On gems, crystals, and
organic petrefactions inclosed within solid rocks," he showed, by
dissecting a shark from the Mediterranean, that certain fossil teeth
found in Tuscany were also those of some shark. "He had also compared
the shells discovered in the Italian strata with living species, pointed
out their resemblance, and traced the various gradations from shells
merely calcined, or which had only lost their animal gluten, to those
petrefactions in which there was a perfect substitution of stony matter"
(Lyell's _Principles_, p. 25). About twenty years afterwards, the
English philosopher Robert Hooke, in a discourse on earthquakes, written
in 1688, but published posthumously in 1705, was aware that the fossil
ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in
England, were of different species from any then known; but he doubted
whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of
naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the
deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he
leans to the opinion that species had been lost. Some species, he
observes with great sagacity, "are _peculiar to certain places_, and not
to be found elsewhere." Turtles and such large ammonites as are found in
Portland seem to have been the productions of hotter countries, and he
thought that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone
(Lyell's _Principles_).

Gesner the botanist, of Zurich, also published in 1758 an excellent
treatise on petrefactions and the changes of the earth which they
testify. He observed that some fossils, "such as ammonites, gryphites,
belemnites, and other shells, are either of unknown species or found
only in the Indian and other distant seas" (Lyell's _Principles_).

Geikie estimates very highly Guettard's labors in palæontology, saying
that "his descriptions and excellent drawings entitle him to rank as the
first great leader of the palæontological school of France." He
published many long and elaborate memoirs containing brief descriptions,
but without specific names, and figured some hundreds of fossil shells.
He was the first to recognize trilobites (Illænus) in the Silurian
slates of Angers, in a memoir published in 1762. Some of his generic
names, says Geikie, "have passed into the languages of modern
palæontology," and one of the genera of chalk sponges which he
described has been named after him, _Guettardia_. In his memoir "On the
accidents that have befallen fossil shells compared with those which are
found to happen to shells now living in the sea" (Trans. Acad. Roy.
Sciences, 1765, pp. 189, 329, 399) he shows that the beds of fossil
shells on the land present the closest possible analogy to the flow of
the present sea, so that it becomes impossible to doubt that the
accidents, such as broken and worn shells, which have affected the
fossil organisms, arose from precisely the same causes as those of
exactly the same nature that still befall their successors on the
existing ocean bottom. On the other hand, Geikie observes that it must
be acknowledged "that Guettard does not seem to have had any clear ideas
of the sequence of formations and of geological structures."

[84] Scheuchzer's "Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes" (_Piscium
Querelae et Vindiciae_, Germany, 1708), "a work of zoölogical merit, in
which he gave some good plates and descriptions of fossil fish" (Lyell).
Gesner's treatise on petrefactions preceded Lamarck's work in this
direction, as did Brander's _Fossillia Hantoniensia_, published in 1766,
which contained "excellent figures of fossil shells from the more modern
(or Eocene) marine strata of Hampshire. In his opinion fossil animals
and testacea were, for the most part, of unknown species, and of such as
were known the living analogues now belonged to southern latitudes"
(Lyell's _Principles_, eighth edition, p. 46).

[85] _Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle_, vi., 1805, pp. 222-228.

[86] _Recueil de Planches des Coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris_
(Paris, 1823). There are added two plates of fossil fresh-water shells
(twenty-one species of Limnæa, etc.) by Brard, with sixty-two figures.

[87] _Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Biographies scientifiques_, par
Ducrotay de Blainville (Paris, 1890, p. 446).

[88] "Mémoire sur des os fossiles découverts auprès de la ville d'Aix en
Provence" (Mém. Acad. Sc., Paris, 1760, pp. 209-220).

[89] "Sur un os d'une grosseur énorme qu'on a trouvé dans une couche de
glaise au milieu de Paris; et en général sur les ossemens fossiles qui
ont appartenu à de grands animaux" (_Journal de Physique_, tome xvii.,
1781. pp. 393-405). Lamanon also, in 1780, published in the same
_Journal_ an article on the nature and position of the bones found at
Aix en Provence; and in 1783 another article on the fossil bones
belonging to gigantic animals.

[90] Hollmann had still earlier published a paper entitled _De corporum
marinorum, aliorumque peregrinorum in terra continente origine_
(_Commentarii Soc. Goettingen._, tom. iii., 1753, pp. 285-374).

[91] _Novi Commentarii Soc. Sc. Goettingensis_, tom. ii., _Commentat._,
tom. i.

[92] His first palæontological article appears to have been one entitled
_Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Vorwelt_ (Lichtenberg, _Voigt's
Magaz._, Bd. vi., S. 4, 1790, pp. 1-17). I have been unable to ascertain
in which of his publications he describes and names the cave-bear.

[93] _Specimen archæologia telluris terrarumque imprimis Hannoveranæ_,
pts. i., ii. _Cum 4 tabl. aen. 4 maj._ Gottingæ, 1803.

[94] Faujas Saint-Fond wrote articles on fossil bones (1794); on fossil
plants both of France (1803) and of Monte Bolca (1820); on a fish from
Nanterre (1802) and a fossil turtle (1803); on two species of fossil ox,
whose skulls were found in Germany, France, and England (1803), and on
an elephant's tusk found in the volcanic tufa of Darbres (1803); on the
fossil shells of Mayence (1806); and on a new genus (_Clotho_) of
bivalve shells.

[95] _Sur les ossemens qui se trouvent dans le gyps de Montmartre_
(_Bulletin des sciences pour la Société philomatique_, tomes 1, 2, 1798,
pp. 154-155).

[96] The following account is translated from the fourth edition of the
_Ossemens fossiles_, vol. 1., 1834, also the sixth edition of the
_Discours_, separately published in 1830. It does not differ materially
from the first edition of the _Essay on the Theory of the Earth_,
translated by Jameson, and republished in New York, with additions by
Samuel L. Mitchell, in 1818.

[97] In the first edition of the _Théorie_ he says fifteen years,
writing in 1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to
thirty.

[98] De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier's law and of his
assumptions; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says:

"Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. G.
Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in a
kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then
almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections
which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a
comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without
having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism
which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, because
he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science of
organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did.
Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his
assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a
skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously correlated
in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong
imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in
an animal well known and studied even to satiety; but for an unknown
animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the
anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anatomists
like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d'Azyr, Blumenbach, Soemmering, and
Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier would have been
himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at his word, and besides
it is this assertion which will remain formulated in the mouths of the
ignorant, and which has already made many persons believe that it is
possible to answer the most difficult and often insoluble problems in
palæontology, without having made any preliminary study, with the aid of
dividers, and, on the other hand, discouraging the Blumenbachs and
Soemmerings from giving their attention to this kind of work."

Huxley has, _inter alia_, put the case in a somewhat similar way, to
show that the law should at least be applied with much caution to
unknown forms:

"Cuvier, in the _Discours sur les Révolutions de la Surface du Globe_,
strangely credits himself, and has ever since been credited by others,
with the invention of a new method of palæontological research. But if
you will turn to the _Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles_, and watch
Cuvier not speculating, but working, you will find that his method is
neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his
famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of
stone to the pelvis which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he
or any one else knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule,
constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply
because experience has shown that these two structures are coördinated"
(_Science and Hebrew Tradition. Rise and Progress of Paleontology_ 1881,
p. 23).

[99] _History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery_ (1879).

[100] The following statement of Cuvier's views is taken from Jameson's
translation of the first _Essay on the Theory of the Earth_, "which
formed the introduction to his _Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles_,"
the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the
publication of the _Hydrogéologie_. The original I have not seen, but I
have compared Jameson's translation with the sixth edition of the
_Discours_ (1820).

[101] Cuvier, in speaking of these revolutions, "which have changed the
surface of our earth," correctly reasons that they must have excited a
more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine
animals. "As these revolutions," he says, "have consisted chiefly in
changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all
the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption over the land was
general, they must have destroyed the entire class, or, if confined only
to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed at least all
the species inhabiting these continents, without having the same effect
upon the marine animals. On the other hand, millions of aquatic animals
may have been left quite dry, or buried in newly formed strata or thrown
violently on the coasts, while their races may have been still preserved
in more peaceful parts of the sea, whence they might again propagate and
spread after the agitation of the water had ceased."

[102] _Discours_, etc. Sixth edition.

[103] Felix Bernard, _The Principles of Paleontology_, Paris, 1895,
translated by C. E. Brooks, edited by J. M. Clark, from 14th Annual
Report New York State Geologist, 1895, pp. 127-217 (p. 16). Bernard
gives no reference to the work in which Schlotheim expressed this
opinion. E. v. Schlotheim's first work, _Flora der Vorwelt_, appeared in
1804, entitled _Beschreibung merkwürdiger Kraüterabdrücke und
Pflanzenversteinerungen. Ein Beytrag zur Flora der Vorvelt._ I Abtheil.
Mit 14 Kpfrn. 4^o. Gotha, 1804. A later work was _Beyträge zur
Naturgeschichte der Versteinerungen in geognostischer Hinsicht_
(_Denkschrift d. k. Academie d. Wissenschaften zu München für den Jahren
1816 und 1817_. 8 Taf. München, 1819). He was followed in Germany by
Sternberg (_Versuch einer geognostischbotanischen Darstellung der Flora
der Vorvelt._ 1-8. 1811. Leipzig, 1820-38); and in France by A. T.
Brongniart, 1801-1876 (_Histoire des Végétaux fossiles_, 1828). These
were the pioneers in palæophytology.

[104] Bernard's _History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery_
(1879), p. 23.

[105] In his valuable and comprehensive _Geschichte der Geologie und
Paläontologie_ (1899), Prof. K. von Zittel, while referring to Lamarck's
works on the tertiary shells of Paris and his _Animaux sans Vertèbres_,
also giving a just and full account of his life, practically gives him
the credit of being one of the founders of invertebrate palæontology. He
speaks of him as "the reformer and founder of scientific conchology,"
and states that "he defined with wonderful acuteness the numerous genera
and species of invertebrate animals, and created thereby for the ten
years following an authoritative foundation." Zittel, however, does not
mention the _Hydrogéologie_. Probably so rare a book was overlooked by
the eminent German palæontologist.

[106] _History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery_ (1879), p. 23.




CHAPTER X

LAMARCK'S OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOLOGY


Lamarck died before the rise of the sciences of morphology, embryology,
and cytology. As to palæontology, which he aided in founding, he had but
the slightest idea of the geological succession of life-forms, and not
an inkling of the biogenetic law or recapitulation theory. Little did he
know or foresee that the main and strongest support of his own theory
was to be this same science of the extinct forms of life. Yet it is a
matter of interest to know what were his views or opinions on the nature
of life; whether he made any suggestions bearing on the doctrine of the
unity of nature; whether he was a vitalist or not; and whether he was a
follower of Haller and of Bonnet,[107] as was Cuvier, or pronounced in
favor of epigenesis.

We know that he was a firm believer in spontaneous generation, and that
he conceived that it took place not only in the origination of his
primeval germs or _ébauches_, but at all later periods down to the
present day.

Yet Lamarck accepted Harvey's doctrine, published in 1651, that all
living beings arose from germs or eggs.[108]

He must have known of Spallanzani's experiments, published in 1776, even
if he had not read the writings of Treviranus (1802-1805), both of whom
had experimentally disproved the theory of the spontaneous generation of
animalcules in putrid infusions, showing that the lowest organisms
develop only from germs.

The eighteenth century, though one of great intellectual activity, was,
however, as regards cosmology, geology, general physiology or biology, a
period of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth or even a
part of it was beyond the reach of the greatest geniuses, and they could
only seize on half-truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist,
systematic zoölogist, and synthetic philosopher, had done his best work
before the rise of the experimental and inductive methods, when direct
observation and experiments had begun to take the place of vague _à
priori_ thinking and reasoning, so that he labored under a disadvantage
due largely to the age in which he lived.

Only the closing years of the century witnessed the rise of the
experimental methods in physics and chemistry, owing to the brilliant
work of Priestley and of Lavoisier. The foundations of general
physiology had been laid by Haller,[109] those of embryology to a
partial extent by Wolff,[110] Von Baer's work not appearing until 1829,
the year in which Lamarck died.

_Spontaneous Generation._--Lamarck's views on spontaneous generation are
stated in his _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans_ (1802).
He begins by referring to his statement in a previous work[111] that
life may be suspended for a time and then go on again.

  "Here I would remark it (life) can be produced (_préparée_) both by
  an organic act and by nature herself, without any act of this kind,
  in such a way that certain bodies without possessing life can be
  prepared to receive it, by an impression _which indicates in these
  bodies the first traces of organization_."

We will not enter upon an exposition of his views on the nature of
sexual generation and of fecundation, the character of his _vapeur
subtile_ (_aura vitalis_) which he supposes to take an active part in
the act of fertilization, because the notion is quite as objectionable
as that of the vital force which he rejects. He goes on to say, however,
that we cannot penetrate farther into the wonderful mystery of
fecundation, but the opinions he expresses lead to the view that
"nature herself imitates her procedures in fecundation in another state
of things, without having need of the union or of the products of any
preëxistent organization."

He proceeds to observe that in the places where his _aura vitalis_, or
subtle fluid, is very abundant, as in hot climates or in heated periods,
and especially in humid places, life seems to originate and to multiply
itself everywhere and with a singular rapidity.

  "In this high temperature the higher animals and mankind develop and
  mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly;
  while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the
  simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and
  irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all
  plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light
  complete the conditions necessary to their existence.

  "Because heat is so advantageous to the simplest animals, let us
  examine whether there is not occasion for believing that it can
  itself form, with the concourse of favorable circumstances, the
  first germs of animal life.

  "_Nature necessarily forms generations, spontaneous or direct, at
  the extremity of each organic kingdom or where the simplest organic
  bodies occur._"

This proposition, he allows, is so far removed from the view generally
held, that it will be for a long time, and perhaps always, regarded as
one of the errors of the human mind.

  "I do not," he adds, "ask any one to accord it the least confidence
  on my word alone. But as surely it will happen, sooner or later,
  that men on the one hand independent of prejudices even the most
  widespread, and on the other profound observers of nature, may have
  a glimpse of this truth, I am very content that we should know that
  it is of the number of those views which, in spite of the prejudices
  of my age, I have thought it well to accept."

"Why," he asks, "should not heat and electricity act on certain matters
under favorable conditions and circumstances?" He quotes Lavoisier as
saying (_Chémie_, i., p. 202) "that God in creating light had spread
over the world the principle of organization of feeling and of thought";
and Lamarck suggests that heat, "this mother of generation, this
material soul of organized bodies," may be the chief one of the means
which nature directly employs to produce in the appropriate kind of
matter an act of arrangement of parts, of a primitive germ of
organization, and consequently of vitalization analogous to sexual
fecundation.

  "Not only the direct formation of the simplest living beings could
  have taken place, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, but the
  following considerations prove that it is necessary that such
  germ-formations should be effected and be repeated under favorable
  conditions, without which the state of things which we observe could
  neither exist nor subsist."

His argument is that in the lower polyps (the Protozoa) there is no
sexual reproduction, no eggs. But they perish (as he strangely thought,
without apparently attempting to verify his belief) in the winter. How,
he asks, can they reappear? Is it not more likely that these simple
organisms are themselves regenerated? After much verbiage and
repetition, he concludes:

  "We may conceive that the simplest organisms can arise from a minute
  mass of substances which possess the following conditions--namely,
  which will have solid parts in a state nearest the fluid conditions,
  consequently having the greatest suppleness and only sufficient
  consistence to be susceptible of constituting the parts contained in
  it. Such is the condition of the most gelatinous organized bodies.

  "Through such a mass of substances the subtile and expansive fluids
  spread, and, always in motion in the milieu environing it,
  unceasingly penetrate it and likewise dissipate it, arranging while
  traversing this mass the internal disposition of its parts, and
  rendering it suitable to continually absorb and to exhale the other
  environing fluids which are able to penetrate into its interior, and
  which are susceptible of being contained.

  "These other fluids, which are water charged with dissolved
  (_dissous_) gas, or with other tenuous substances, the atmospheric
  air, which contains water, etc., I call containable fluids, to
  distinguish them from subtile fluids, such as caloric, electricity,
  etc., which no known bodies are believed to contain.

  "The containable fluids absorbed by the small gelatinous mass in
  question remain almost motionless in its different parts, because
  the non-containable subtile fluids which always penetrate there do
  not permit it.

  "In this way the uncontainable fluids at first mark out the first
  traces of the simplest organization, and consequently the
  containable fluids by their movements and their other influences
  develop it, and with time and all the favorable circumstances
  complete it."

This is certainly a sufficiently vague and unsatisfactory theory of
spontaneous generation. This sort of guess-work and hypothetical
reasoning is not entirely confined to Lamarck's time. Have we not, even
a century later, examples among some of our biologists, and very eminent
ones, of whole volumes of _à priori_ theorizing and reasoning, with
scarcely a single new fact to serve as a foundation? And yet this is an
age of laboratories, of experimentations and of trained observers. The
best of us indulge in far-fetched hypotheses, such as pangenesis,
panmixia, the existence of determinants, and if this be so should we not
excuse Lamarck, who gave so many years to close observation in
systematic botany and zoölogy, for his flights into the empyrean of
subtle fluids, containable and uncontainable, and for his invocation of
an _aura vitalis_, at a time when the world of demonstrated facts in
modern biology was undiscovered and its existence unsuspected?

_The Preëxistence of Germs and the Encasement Theory._--Lamarck did not
believe in Bonnet's idea of the "preëxistence of germs." He asks whether
there is any foundation for the notion that germs "successively develop
in generations, _i.e._ in the multiplication of individuals for the
preservation of species," and says:

  "I am not inclined to believe it if this preëxistence is taken in a
  general sense; but in limiting it to individuals in which the
  unfertilized embryos or germs are formed before generation. I then
  believe that it has some foundation.--They say with good reason," he
  adds, "that every living being originates from an egg.... But the
  eggs being the envelope of every kind of germ, they preëxist in the
  individuals which produce them, before fertilization has vivified
  them. The seeds of plants (which are vegetable eggs) actually exist
  in the ovaries of flowers before the fertilization of these
  ovaries."[112]

From whom did he get this idea that seeds or eggs are envelopes of all
sorts of germs? It is not the "evolution" of a single germ, as, for
example, an excessively minute but complete chick in the hen's egg, in
the sense held by Bonnet. Who it was he does not mention. He evidently,
however, had the Swiss biologist in mind, who held that all living
things proceed from preëxisting germs.[113]

Whatever may have been his views as to the germs in the egg before
fertilization, we take it that he believed in the epigenetic development
of the plant or animal after the seed or egg was once fertilized.[114]

Lamarck did not adopt the encasement theory of Swammerdam and of Heller.
We find nothing in Lamarck's writings opposed to epigenesis. The
following passage, which bears on this subject, is translated from his
_Mémoires de Physique_ (p. 250), where he contrasts the growth of
organic bodies with that of minerals.

  "The body of this living being not having been formed by
  _juxtaposition_, as most mineral substances, that is to say, by the
  external and successive apposition of particles aggregated _en
  masse_ by attraction, but essentially formed by generation, in its
  principle, it has then grown by intussusception--namely, by the
  introduction, the transportation, and the internal apposition of
  molecules borne along and deposited between its parts; whence have
  resulted the successive developments of parts which compose the body
  of this living individual, and from which afterwards also result the
  repairs which preserve it during a limited time."

Here, as elsewhere in his various works, Lamarck brings out the fact,
for the first time stated, that all material things are either
non-living or mineral, inorganic; or living, organic. A favorite phrase
with him is living bodies, or, as we should say, organisms. He also is
the first one to show that minerals increase by juxtaposition, while
organisms grow by intussusception.

No one would look in his writings for an idea or suggestion of the
principle of differentiation of parts or organs as we now understand it,
or for the idea of the physiological division of labor; these were
reserved for the later periods of embryology and morphology.

_Origin of the First Vital Function._--We will now return to the germ.
After it had begun spontaneous existence, Lamarck proceeds to say:

  "Before the containable fluids absorbed by the small, jelly-like
  mass in question have been expelled by the new portions of the same
  fluids which reach there, they can then deposit certain of the
  contained fluids they carry along, and the movements of the
  contained fluids may apply these substances to the containing parts
  of the newly organized microscopic being. In this way originates the
  first of the vital functions which becomes established in the
  simplest organism, _i.e._, nutrition. The environing containable
  fluids are, then, for the living body of very great simplicity, a
  veritable chyle entirely prepared by nature.

  "Mutilation cannot operate without gradually increasing the
  consistence of the parts contained within the minute new organism
  and without extending its dimensions. Hence soon arose the second of
  the vital functions, _growth or internal development_."

_First Faculty of Animal Nature._--Then gradually as the continuity of
this state of things within the same minute living mass in question
increases the consistence of its parts enclosed within and extends its
dimensions, a vital orgasm, at first very feeble, but becoming
progressively more intense, is formed in these enclosed parts and
renders them susceptible of _reaction_ against the slight impression of
the fluids in motion which they contain, and at the same time renders
them capable of contraction and of distention. Hence the origin of
_animal irritability_ and the basis of feeling, which is developed
wherever a nervous fluid, susceptible of locating the effects in one of
several special centres, can be formed.

  "Scarcely will the living corpuscle, newly animalized, have received
  any increase in consistence and in dimensions of the parts
  contained, when, as the result of the organic movement which it
  enjoys, it will be subjected to successive changes and losses of its
  substance.

  "It will then be obliged to take nourishment not only to obtain any
  development whatever, but also to preserve its individual existence,
  because it is necessary that it repair its losses under penalty of
  its destruction.

  "But as the individual in question has not yet any special organ for
  nutrition, it therefore absorbs by the pores of its internal surface
  the substance adapted for its nourishment. Thus the first mode of
  taking food in a living body so simple can be no other than by
  absorption or a sort of suction, which is accomplished by the pores
  of its outer surface.

  "This is not all; up to the present time the animalized corpuscle we
  are considering is still only a primitive animalcule because it as
  yet has no special organ. Let us see then how nature will come to
  furnish it with any primitive special organ, and what will be the
  organ that nature will form before any others, and which in the
  simplest animal is the only one constantly found; this is the
  alimentary canal, the principal organ of digestion common to all
  except colpodes, vibrios, proteus (amoeba), volvoces, monads, etc.

  "This digestive canal is," he says--proceeding with his _à priori_
  morphology--"a little different from that of this day, produced by
  contractions of the body, which are stronger in one part of the body
  than in another, until a little crease is produced on the surface of
  the body. This furrow or crease will receive the food. Insensibly
  this little furrow by the habit of being filled, and by the so
  frequent use of its pores, will gradually increase in depth; it will
  soon assume the form of a pouch or of a tubular cavity with porous
  walls, a blind sac, or with but a single opening. Behold the
  primitive alimentary canal created by nature, the simplest organ of
  digestion."

In like _à priori_ manner he describes the creation of the faculty of
reproduction. The next organ, he says, is that of reproduction due to
the regenerative faculty. He describes fission and budding. Finally
(p. 122) he says:

  "Indeed, we perceive that if the first germs of living bodies are
  all formed in one day in such great abundance and facility under
  favorable circumstances, they ought to be, nevertheless, by reason
  of the antiquity of the causes which make them exist, the most
  ancient organisms in nature."

In 1794 he rejected the view once held of a continuous chain of being,
the _échelle des êtres_ suggested by Locke and by Leibnitz, and more
fully elaborated by Bonnet, from the inorganic to the organic worlds,
from minerals to plants, from plants to polyps (our Infusoria), polyps
to worms, and so on to the higher animals. He, on the contrary, affirms
that nature makes leaps, that there is a wide gap between minerals and
living bodies, that everything is not gradated and shaded into each
other. One reason for this was possibly his strange view, expressed in
1794, that all brute bodies and inorganic matters, even granite, were
not formed at the same epoch but at different times, and were derived
from organisms.[115]

The mystical doctrine of a vital force was rife in Lamarck's time. The
chief starting point of the doctrine was due to Haller, and, as Verworn
states, it is a doctrine which has confused all physiology down to the
middle of the present century, and even now emerges again here and there
in varied form.[116]

Lamarck was not a vitalist. Life, he says,[117] is usually supposed to
be a particular being or entity; a sort of principle whose nature is
unknown, and which possesses living bodies. This notion he denies as
absurd, saying that life is a very natural phenomenon, a physical fact;
in truth a little complicated in its principles, but not in any sense a
particular or special being or entity.

He then defines life in the following words: "Life is an order and a
state of things in the parts of every body possessing it, which permits
or renders possible in it the execution of organic movement, and which,
so long as it exists, is effectively opposed to death. Derange this
order and this state of things to the point of preventing the execution
of organic movement, or the possibility of its reëstablishment, then you
cause death." Afterwards, in the _Philosophie zoologique_, he modifies
this definition, which reads thus: "Life, in the parts of a body which
possesses it, is an order and a state of things which permit organic
movements; and these movements, which constitute active life, result
from the action of a stimulating cause which excites them."[118]

For the science of all living bodies Lamarck proposed the word
"Biology," which is so convenient a term at the present day. The word
first appears in the preface to the _Hydrogéologie_, published in 1802.
It is worthy of note that in the same year the same word was proposed
for the same science by G. R. Treviranus as the title of a work,
_Biologie, der Philosophie der lebenden Natur_, published in 1802-1805
(vols. i.-vi., 1802-1822), the first volume appearing in 1802.

In the second part of the _Philosophie zoologique_ he considers the
physical causes of life, and in the introduction he defines nature as
the _ensemble_ of objects which comprise: (1) All existing physical
bodies; (2) the general and special laws which regulate the changes of
condition and situation of these bodies; (3) finally, the movement
everywhere going on among them resulting in the wonderful order of
things in nature.

To regard nature as eternal, and consequently as having existed from all
time, is baseless and unreasonable. He prefers to think that nature is
only a result, "whence, I suppose, and am glad to admit, a first cause,
in a word, a supreme power which has given existence to nature, which
has made it as a whole what it is."

As to the source of life in bodies endowed with it, he considers it a
problem more difficult than to determine the course of the stars in
space, or the size, masses, and movements of the planets belonging to
our solar system; but, however formidable the problem, the difficulties
are not insurmountable, as the phenomena are purely physical--_i.e._,
essentially resulting from acts of organization.

After defining life, in the third chapter (beginning vol. ii.) he treats
of the exciting cause of organic movements. This exciting cause is
foreign to the body which it vivifies, and does not perish, like the
latter. "This cause resides in invisible, subtile, expansive,
ever-active fluids which penetrate or are incessantly developed in the
bodies which they animate." These subtile fluids we should in these days
regard as the physico-chemical agents, such as heat, light, electricity.

What he says in the next two chapters as to the "orgasme" and
irritability excited by the before-mentioned exciting cause may be
regarded as a crude foreshadowing of the primary properties of
protoplasm, now regarded as the physical basis of life--_i.e._,
contractility, irritability, and metabolism. In Chapter VI. Lamarck
discusses direct or spontaneous generation in the same way as in 1802.
In the following paragraph we have foreshadowed the characteristic
qualities of the primeval protoplasmic matter fitted to receive the
first traces of organization and life:

  "Every mass of substance homogeneous in appearance, of a gelatinous
  or mucilaginous consistence, whose parts, coherent among themselves,
  will be in the state nearest fluidity, but will have only a
  consistence sufficient to constitute containing parts, will be the
  body most fitted to receive the first traces of organization and
  life."

In the third part of the _Philosophie zoologique_ Lamarck considers the
physical causes of feeling--_i.e._, those which form the productive
force of actions, and those giving rise to intelligent acts. After
describing the nervous system and its functions, he discusses the
nervous fluid. His physiological views are based on those of Richerand's
_Physiologie_, which he at times quotes.

Lamarck's thoughts on the nature of the nervous fluid (_Recherches sur
le fluide nerveux_) are curious and illustrative of the gropings after
the truth of his age.

He claims that the supposed nervous fluid has much analogy to the
electric, that it is the _feu éthéré_ "animalized by the circumstances
under which it occurs." In his _Recherches sur l'organisation des corps
vivans_ (1802) he states that, as the result of changes continually
undergone by the principal fluids of an animal, there is continually set
free in a state of _feu fixé_ a special fluid, which at the instant of
its disengagement occurs in the expansive state of the caloric, then
becomes gradually rarefied, and insensibly arrives at the state of an
extremely subtile fluid which then passes along the smallest nervous
ramifications in the substance of the nerve, which is a very good
conductor for it. On its side the brain sends back the subtile fluid in
question along the nerves to the different organs.

In the same work (1802) Lamarck defines thought as a physical act taking
place in the brain. "This act of thinking gives rise to different
displacements of the subtile nervous fluid and to different
accumulations of this fluid in the parts of the brain where the ideas
have been traced." There result from the flow of the fluid on the
conserved impressions of ideas, special movements which portions of this
fluid acquire with each impression, which give rise to compounds by
their union producing new impressions on the delicate organ which
receives them, and which constitute abstract ideas of all kinds, also
the different acts of thought.

All the acts which constitute thought are the comparisons of ideas, both
simple and complex, and the results of these comparisons are judgments.

He then discusses the influence of the nervous fluid on the muscles, and
also its influence considered as the cause of feeling (_sentiment_).
Finally he concludes that _feu fixé_, caloric, the nervous fluid, and
the electric fluid "are only one and the same substance occurring in
different states."


FOOTNOTES:

[107] Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), a Swiss naturalist, is famous for his
work on Aphides and their parthenogenetic generation, on the mode of
reproduction in the Polyzoa, and on the respiration of insects. After
the age of thirty-four, when his eyesight became impaired, he began his
premature speculations, which did not add to his reputation. Judging,
however, by an extract from his writings by D'Archiac (_Introduction à
l'Étude de la Paléontologie stratigraphique_, ii., p. 49), he had sound
ideas on the theory of descent, claiming that "la diversité et la
multitude des conjunctions, peut-être même la diversité des climats et
des nourritures, ont donné naissance à de nouvelles espèces ou à des
individus intermédiaires" (_Oeuvres d'Hist. nat. et de Philosophie_,
in-8vo, p. 230, 1779).

[108] See his remark: "_On a dit avec raison que tout ce qui a vie
provient d'un auf_" (_Mémoires de Physique_, etc., 1797, p. 272). He
appears, however, to have made the simplest organisms exceptions to this
doctrine.

[109] _Elementa physiologiae corporis humani_, iv. Lausanne, 1762.

[110] _Theoria generationis_, 1774.

[111] _Mémoires de Physique_, (1797), p. 250.

[112] _Mémoires de Physique_, etc. (1797), p. 272.

[113] Huxley's "Evolution in Biology" (_Darwiniana_, p. 192), where be
quotes from Bonnet's statements, which "bear no small resemblance to
what is understood by evolution at the present day."

[114] Buffon did not accept Bonnet's theory of preëxistent germs, but he
assumed the existence of "_germes accumulés_" which reproduced parts or
organs, and for the production of organisms he imagined "_molécules
organiques_." Réaumur had previously (1712) conjectured that there were
"_germes cachés et accumulés_" to account for the regeneration of the
limbs of the crayfish. The ideas of Bonnet on germs are stated in his
_Mémoires sur les Salamandres_ (1777-78-80) and in his _Considérations
sur les corps organisés_ (1762.)

[115] _Mémoires de Physique_, etc., pp. 318, 319, 324-359. Yet the idea
of a sort of continuity between the inorganic and the organic world is
expressed by Verworn.

[116] _General Physiology_ (English trans., 1899, p. 17). In France
vitalism was founded by Bordeu (1722-1766), developed further by Barthez
(1734-1806) and Chaussier (1746-1828), and formulated most distinctly by
Louis Dumas (1765-1813). Later vitalists gave it a thoroughly mystical
aspect, distinguishing several varieties, such as the _nisus formativus_
or formative effort, to explain the forms of organisms, accounting for
the fact that from the egg of a bird, a bird and no other species always
develops (_l. c._, p. 18).

[117] _Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivans_ (1802), p. 70.
The same view was expressed in _Mémoires de physique_ (1797),
pp. 254-257, 386.

[118] Here might be quoted for comparison other famous definitions of
life:

"Life is the sum of the functions by which death is resisted."--Bichat.

"Life is the result of organization."--(?)

"Life is the principle of individuation."--Coleridge ex. Schelling.

"Life is the twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition,
at once general and continuous."--De Blainville, who wisely added that
there are "two fundamental and correlative conditions inseparable from
the living being--an organism and a medium."

"Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations."--Herbert Spencer.




CHAPTER XI

LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST


During the century preceding the time of Lamarck, botany had not
flourished in France with the vigor shown in other countries. Lamarck
himself frankly stated in his address to the Committee of Public
Instruction of the National Convention that the study of plants had been
for a century neglected by Frenchmen, and that the great progress which
it had made during this time was almost entirely due to foreigners.

  "I am free to say that since the distinguished Tournefort the French
  have remained to some extent inactive in this direction; they have
  produced almost nothing, unless we except some fragmentary mediocre
  or unimportant works. On the other hand, Linné in Sweden, Dilwillen
  in England, Haller in Switzerland, Jacquin in Austria, etc., have
  immortalized themselves by their own works, vastly extending the
  limit of our knowledge in this interesting part of natural history."

What led young Lamarck to take up botanical studies, his botanical
rambles about Paris, and his longer journeys in different parts of
France and in other countries, his six years of unremitting labor on his
_Flore Française_, and the immediate fame it brought him, culminating in
his election as a member of the French Academy, have been already
recounted.

Lamarck was thirty-four when his _Flore Française_ appeared. It was not
preceded, as in the case of most botanical works, by any preliminary
papers containing descriptions of new or unknown species, and the three
stout octavo volumes appeared together at the same date.

The first volume opens with a report on the work made by MM. Duhamel and
Guettard. Then follows the _Discours Préliminaire_, comprising over a
hundred pages, while the main body of the work opens with the _Principes
Élémentaires de Botanique_, occupying 223 pages. The work was a general
elementary botany and written in French. Before this time botanists had
departed from the artificial system of Linné, though it was convenient
for amateurs in naming their plants. Jussieu had proposed his system of
natural families, founded on a scientific basis, but naturally more
difficult for the use of beginners. To obviate the matter Lamarck
conceived and proposed the dichotomic method for the easy determination
of species. No new species were described, and the work, written in the
vernacular, was simply a guide to the indigenous plants of France,
beginning with the cryptogams and ending with the flowering plants. A
second edition appeared in 1780, and a third, edited and remodelled by
A. P. De Candolle, and forming six volumes, appeared in 1805-1815. This
was until within a comparatively few years the standard French botany.

Soon after the publication of his _Flore Française_ he projected two
other works which gave him a still higher position among botanists. His
_Dictionnaire de Botanique_ was published in 1783-1817, forming eight
volumes and five supplementary ones. The first two and part of the third
volume were written by Lamarck, the remainder by other botanists, who
completed it after Lamarck had abandoned botanical studies and taken up
his zoölogical work. His second great undertaking was _L'Illustration
des Genres_ (1791-1800), with a supplement by Poiret (1823).

Cuvier speaks thus of these works:

  "_L'Illustration des Genres_ is a work especially fitted to enable
  one to acquire readily an almost complete idea of this beautiful
  science. The precision of the descriptions and of the definitions of
  Linnæus is maintained, as in the institutions of Tournefort, with
  figures adapted to give body to these abstractions, and to appeal
  both to the eye and to the mind, and not only are the flowers and
  fruits represented, but often the entire plant. More than two
  thousand genera are thus made available for study in a thousand
  plates in quarto, and at the same time the abridged characters of a
  vast number of species are given.

  "The _Dictionnaire_ contains more details of the history with
  careful descriptions, critical researches on their synonymy, and
  many interesting observations on their uses or on special points of
  their organizations. The matter is not all original in either of the
  works, far from it, but the choice of figures is skilfully made, the
  descriptions are drawn from the best authors, and there are a large
  number which relate to species and also some genera previously
  unknown."

Lamarck himself says that after the publication of his _Flore
Française_, his zeal for work increasing, and after travelling by order
of the government in different parts of Europe, he undertook on a vast
scale a general work on botany.

  "This work comprised two distinct features. In the first (_Le
  Dictionnaire_), which made a part of the new encyclopedia, the
  citizen Lamarck treats of philosophical botany, also giving the
  complete description of all the genera and species known. An immense
  work from the labor it cost, and truly original in its execution....
  The second treatise, entitled _Illustration des Genres_, presents in
  the order of the sexual system the figures and the details of all
  the genera known in botany, and with a concise exposition of the
  generic characters and of the species known. This work, unique of
  its kind, already contains six hundred plates executed by the best
  artists, and will comprise nine hundred. Also for more than ten
  years the citizen Lamarck has employed in Paris a great number of
  artists. Moreover, he has kept running three separate presses for
  different works, all relating to natural history."

Cuvier in his _Éloge_ also adds:

  "It is astonishing that M. de Lamarck, who hitherto had been
  studying botany as an amateur, was able so rapidly to qualify
  himself to produce so extensive a work, in which the rarest plants
  were described. It is because, from the moment he undertook it, with
  all the enthusiasm of his nature, he collected them from the gardens
  and examined them in all the available herbaria; passing the days at
  the houses of the botanists he knew, but chiefly at the home of M.
  de Jussieu, in that home where for more than a century a scientific
  hospitality welcomed with equal kindness every one who was
  interested in the delightful study of botany. When any one reached
  Paris with plants he might be sure that the first one who should
  visit him would be M. de Lamarck; this eager interest was the means
  of his receiving one of the most valuable presents he could have
  desired. The celebrated traveller Sonnerat, having returned in 1781
  for the second time from the Indies, with very rich collections of
  natural history, imagined that every one who cultivated this science
  would flock to him; it was not at Pondichéry or in the Moluccas that
  he had conceived an idea of the vortex which too often in this
  capital draws the savants as well as men of the world; no one came
  but M. de Lamarck, and Sonnerat, in his chagrin, gave him the
  magnificent collection of plants which he had brought. He profited
  also by that of Commerson, and by those which had been accumulated
  by M. de Jussieu, and which were generously opened to him."

These works were evidently planned and carried out on a broad and
comprehensive scale, with originality of treatment, and they were most
useful and widely used. Lamarck's original special botanical papers were
numerous. They were mostly descriptive of new species and genera, but
some were much broader in scope and were published over a period of ten
years, from 1784 to 1794, and appeared in the _Journal d'Histoire
naturelle_, which he founded, and in the _Mémoires_ of the Academy of
Sciences.

He discussed the shape or aspect of the plants characteristic of certain
countries, while his last botanical effort was on the sensibility of
plants (1798).

Although not in the front rank of botanists, compared with Linné,
Jussieu, De Candolle, and others, yet during the twenty-six years of his
botanical career it may safely be said that Lamarck gave an immense
impetus to botany in France, and fully earned the title of "the French
Linné."

Lamarck not only described a number of genera and species of plants, but
he attempted a general classification, as Cleland states:

  "In 1785 (_Hist. de l'Acad._) he evinced his appreciation of the
  necessity of natural orders in botany by an attempt at the
  classification of plants, interesting though crude, and falling
  immeasurably short of the system which grew in the hands of his
  intimate friend Jussieu."--_Encyc. Brit._, Art. LAMARCK.

A genus of tropical plants of the group _Solanaceæ_ was named _Markea_
by Richard, in honor of Lamarck, but changed by Persoon and Poiret to
_Lamarckea_. The name _Lamarckia_ of Moench and Koeler was proposed for
a genus of grasses; it is now _Chrysurus_.

Lamarck's success as a botanist led to more or less intimate relations
with Buffon. But it appears that the good-will of this great naturalist
and courtier for the rising botanist was not wholly disinterested.
Lamarck owed the humble and poorly paid position of keeper of the
herbarium to Buffon. Bourguin adds, however:

  "_Mais il les dut moins à ses mérites qu'aux petits passions de la
  science officielle._ The illustrious Buffon, who was at the same
  time a very great lord at court, was jealous of Linné. He could not
  endure having any one compare his brilliant and eloquent
  word-pictures of animals with the cold and methodical descriptions
  of the celebrated Swedish naturalist. So he attempted to combat him
  in another field--botany. For this reason he encouraged and pushed
  Lamarck into notice, who, as the popularizer of the system of
  classification into natural families, seemed to him to oppose the
  development of the arrangement of Linné."

Lamarck's style was never a highly finished one, and his incipient
essays seemed faulty to Buffon, who took so much pains to write all his
works in elegant and pure French. So he begged the Abbé Haüy to review
the literary form of Lamarck's works.

Here it might be said that Lamarck's is the philosophic style; often
animated, clear, and pure, it at times, however, becomes prolix and
tedious, owing to occasional repetition.

But after all it can easily be understood that the discipline of his
botanical studies, the friendship manifested for him by Buffon, then so
influential and popular, the relations Lamarck had with Jussieu, Haüy,
and the zoölogists of the Jardin du Roi, were all important factors in
Lamarck's success in life, a success not without terrible drawbacks, and
to the full fruition of which he did not in his own life attain.




CHAPTER XII

LAMARCK THE ZOÖLOGIST


Although there has been and still may be a difference of opinion as to
the value and permanency of Lamarck's theoretical views, there has never
been any lack of appreciation of his labors as a systematic zoölogist.
He was undoubtedly the greatest zoölogist of his time. Lamarck is the
one dominant personage who in the domain of zoölogy filled the interval
between Linné and Cuvier, and in acuteness and sound judgment he at
times surpassed Cuvier. His was the master mind of the period of
systematic zoölogy, which began with Linné--the period which, in the
history of zoölogy, preceded that of comparative anatomy and morphology.

After Aristotle, no epoch-making zoölogist arose until Linné was born.
In England Linné was preceded by Ray, but binomial nomenclature and the
first genuine attempt at the classification of animals dates back to the
_Systema Naturæ_ of Linné, the tenth edition of which appeared in 1758.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LAMARCK]

The contemporaries of Lamarck in biological science, in the eighteenth
century, were Camper (1722-89), Spallanzani (1729-99), Wolff (1733-94),
Hunter (1728-93), Bichat (1771-1802), and Vicq d'Azyr (1748-94). These
were all anatomists and physiologists, the last-named being the first
to propose and use the term "comparative anatomy," while Bichat was the
founder of histology and pathological anatomy. There was in fact no
prominent systematic zoölogist in the interval between Linné and
Lamarck. In France there were only two zoölogists of prominence when
Lamarck assumed his duties at the Museum. These were Bruguière the
conchologist and Olivier the entomologist. In Germany Hermann was the
leading systematic zoölogist. We would not forget the labors of the
great German anatomist and physiologist Blumenbach, who was also the
founder of anthropology; nor the German anatomists Tiedemann, Bojanus,
and Carus; nor the embryologist Döllinger. But Lamarck's method and
point of view were of a new order--he was much more than a mere
systematist. His work in systematic zoölogy, unlike that of Linné, and
especially of Cuvier, was that of a far higher grade. Lamarck, besides
his rigid, analytical, thorough, and comprehensive work on the
invertebrates, whereby he evolved order and system out of the chaotic
mass of forms comprised in the Insects and Vermes of Linné, was animated
with conceptions and theories to which his forerunners and
contemporaries, Geoffroy St. Hilaire excepted, were entire strangers.
His tabular view of the classes of the animal kingdom was to his mind a
genealogical tree; his idea of the animal kingdom anticipated and was
akin to that of our day. He compares the animal series to a tree with
its numerous branches, rather than to a single chain of being. This
series, as he expressly states, began with the monad and ended with
man; it began with the simple and ended with the complex, or, as we
should now say, it proceeded from the generalized or undifferentiated to
the specialized and differentiated. He perceived that many forms had
been subjected to what he calls degeneration, or, as we say,
modification, and that the progress from the simple to the complex was
by no means direct. Moreover, fossil animals were, according to his
views, practically extinct species, and stood in the light of being the
ancestors of the members of our existing fauna. In fact, his views,
notwithstanding shortcomings and errors in classification naturally due
to the limited knowledge of anatomy and development of his time, have
been at the end of a century entirely confirmed--a striking testimony to
his profound insight, sound judgment, and philosophic breadth.

The reforms that he brought about in the classification of the
invertebrate animals were direct and positive improvements, were adopted
by Cuvier in his _Règne animal_, and have never been set aside. We owe
to him the foundation and definition of the classes of Infusoria,
Annelida, Arachnida, and Crustacea, the two latter groups being
separated from the insects. He also showed the distinctness of
echinoderms from polyps, thus anticipating Leuckart, who established the
phylum of Coelenterata nearly half a century later. His special work
was the classification of the great group of Mollusca, which he regarded
as a class. When in our boyhood days we attempted to arrange our shells,
we were taught to use the Lamarckian system, that of Linné having been
discarded many years previous. The great reforms in the classification
of shells are evidenced by the numerous manuals of conchology based on
the works of Lamarck.

We used to hear much of the Lamarckian genera of shells, and Lamarck was
the first to perceive the necessity of breaking up into smaller
categories the few genera of Linné, which now are regarded as families.
He may be said to have had a wonderfully good eye for genera. All his
generic divisions were at once accepted, since they were based on valid
characters.

Though not a comparative anatomist, he at once perceived the value of a
knowledge of the internal structure of animals, and made effective use
of the discoveries of Cuvier and of his predecessors--in fact, basing
his system of classification on the organs of respiration, circulation,
and the nervous system.

He intimated that specific characters vary most, and that the peripheral
parts of the body, as the shell, outer protective structures, the limbs,
mouth-parts, antennæ, etc., are first affected by the causes which
produce variation, while he distinctly states that it requires a longer
time for variations to take place in the internal organs. On the latter
he relied in defining his classes.

One is curious to know how Lamarck viewed the question of species. This
is discussed at length by him in his general essays, which are
reproduced farther on in this biography, but his definition of what a
species is far surpasses in breadth and terseness, and better satisfies
the views now prevailing, than that of any other author.

His definition of a species is as follows:

  "Every collection of similar individuals, perpetuated by generation
  in the same condition, so long as the circumstances of their
  situation do not change enough to produce variations in their
  habits, character, and form."

Lamarck's rare skill, thoroughness, and acuteness as an observer,
combined with great breadth of view, were also supplemented by the
advantages arising from residence in Paris, and his connection with the
Museum of Natural History. Paris was in the opening years of the
nineteenth century the chief centre of biological science. France having
convalesced from the intestinal disorders of the Revolution, and, as the
result of her foreign wars, adding to her territory and power, had begun
with the strength of a young giant to send out those splendid exploring
expeditions which gathered in collections in natural history from all
parts of the known or accessible world, and poured them, as it were,
into the laps of the professors of the Jardin des Plantes. The shelves
and cases of the galleries fairly groaned with the weight of the
zoölogical riches which crowded them. From the year 1800 to 1832 the
French government showed the greatest activity in sending out exploring
expeditions to Egypt, Africa, and the tropics.[119]

The zoölogists who explored Egypt were Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Savigny.
Those who visited the East, the South Seas, the East Indian archipelago,
and other regions were Bruguière, Olivier, Bory de St. Vincent, Péron,
Lesueur, Quoy, Gaimard, Le Vaillant, Edoux, and Souleyet. The natural
result was the enormous collections of the Jardin des Plantes, and
consequently enlarged views regarding the number and distribution of
species, and their relation to their environment.

In Paris, about the time of Lamarck's death, flourished also Savigny,
who published his immortal works on the morphology of arthropods and of
ascidians; and Straus-Durckheim, whose splendidly illustrated volumes on
the anatomy of the cockchafer and of the cat will never cease to be of
value; and É. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose elaborate and classical works
on vertebrate morphology, embryology, and comparative anatomy added so
much to the prestige of French science.

We may be sure that Lamarck did his own work without help from others,
and gave full credit to those who, like Defrance or Bruguière, aided or
immediately preceded him. He probably was lacking in executive force, or
in the art which Cuvier knew so well to practise, of enlisting young men
to do the drudgery or render material aid, and then, in some cases,
neglecting to give them proper credit.

The first memoir or paper published on a zoölogical subject by Lamarck
was a modest one on shells, which appeared in 1792 in the _Journal
d'Histoire naturelle_, the editors of which were Lamarck, Bruguière,
Olivier, Haüy, and Pelletier. This paper was a review of an excellent
memoir by Bruguière, who preceded Lamarck in the work of dismemberment
of the Linnæan genera. His next paper was on four new species of Helix.
To this _Journal_, of which only two volumes were published, Cuvier
contributed his first paper--namely, on some new species of "Cloportes"
(Oniscus, a genus of terrestrial crustacea or "pill-bugs"); this was
followed by his second memoir on the anatomy of the limpet, his next
article being descriptions of two species of flies from his collection
of insects.[120] Seven years later Lamarck gave some account of the
genera of cuttlefishes. His first general memoir was a prodromus of a
new classification of shells (1799).

Meanwhile Lamarck's knowledge of shells and corals was utilized by
Cuvier in his _Tableau élémentaire_, published in 1798, who acknowledges
in the preface that in the exposition of the genera of shells he has
been powerfully seconded, while he indicated to him (Cuvier) a part of
the subgenera of corals and alcyonarians, and adds, "I have received
great aid from the examination of his collection." Also he acknowledges
that he had been greatly aided (_puissamment secondé_) by Lamarck, who
had even indicated the most of the subdivisions established in his
_Tableau élémentaire_ for the insects (Blainville, _l. c._, p. 129), and
he also accepted his genera of cuttlefishes.

After this Lamarck judiciously refrained from publishing descriptions of
new species, and other fragmentary labors, and for some ten years from
the date of publication of his first zoölogical article reserved his
strength and elaborated his first general zoölogical work, a thick
octavo volume of 452 pages, entitled _Système des Animaux sans
Vertèbres_, which appeared in 1801.

Linné had divided all the animals below the vertebrates into two classes
only, the Insecta and Vermes, the insects comprising the present classes
of insects, Myriapoda, Arachnida, and Crustacea; the Vermes embracing
all the other invertebrate animals, from the molluscs to the monads.

Lamarck perceived the need of reform, of bringing order out of the
chaotic mass of animal forms, and he says (p. 33) that he has been
continually occupied since his attachment to the museum with this
reform.

He relies for his characters, the fundamental ones, on the organs of
respiration, circulation, and on the form of the nervous system. The
reasons he gives for his classification are sound and philosophical, and
presented with the ease and aplomb of a master of taxonomy.

He divided the invertebrates, which Cuvier had called animals with white
blood, into the seven following classes.

We place in a parallel column the classification of Cuvier in 1798.


  _Classification of Lamarck._        _Classification of Cuvier._

  1. Mollusca.                           I. _Mollusca._

  2. Crustacea.                         II. _Insectes et Vers._

  3. Arachnides (comprising                 1. Insectes.
     the Myriapoda).                        2. Vers.

  4. Insectes.                         III. _Zoophytes._

  5. Vers.                                  1. Echinodermes.
                                            2. Meduses, Animaux
  6. Radiaires.                                infusorines, Rotifer,
                                               Vibrio, Volvox.
  7. Polypes.                               3. Zoophytes proprement
                                               dits.


Of these, four were for the first time defined, and the others
restricted. It will be noticed that he separates the Radiata
(_Radiaires_) from the Polypes. His "Radiaires" included the
Echinoderms (the _Vers echinoderms_ of Bruguière) and the Medusæ (his
_Radiaires molasses_), the latter forming the Discophora and
Siphonophora of present zoölogists. This is an anticipation of the
division by Leuckart in 1839 of the Radiata of Cuvier into
Coelenterata and Echinodermata.

The "Polypes" of Lamarck included not only the forms now known as such,
but also the Rotifera and Protozoa, though, as we shall see, he
afterwards in his course of 1807 eliminated from this heterogeneous
assemblage the Infusoria.

Comparing this classification with that of Cuvier[121] published in
1798, we find that in the most important respects, _i.e._, the
foundation of the classes of Crustacea, Arachnida, and Radiata, there is
a great advance over Cuvier's system. In Cuvier's work the molluscs are
separated from the worms, and they are divided into three groups,
Cephalopodes, Gasteropodes, and Acephales--an arrangement which still
holds, that of Lamarck into Mollusques céphalés and Mollusques acéphalés
being much less natural. With the elimination of the Mollusca, Cuvier
allowed the Vers or Vermes of Linné to remain undisturbed, except that
the Zoöphytes, the equivalent of Lamarck's Polypes, are separately
treated.

He agrees with Cuvier in placing the molluscs at the head of the
invertebrates, a course still pursued by some zoölogists at the present
day. He states in the _Philosophie Zoologique_[122] that in his course
of lectures of the year 1799 he established the class of Crustacea, and
adds that "although this class is essentially distinct, it was not until
six or seven years after that some naturalists consented to adopt it."
The year following, or in his course of 1800, he separated from the
insects the class of Arachnida, as "easy and necessary to be
distinguished." But in 1809 he says that this class "is not yet admitted
into any other work than my own."[123] As to the class of Annelides, he
remarks: "Cuvier having discovered the existence of arterial and venous
vessels in different animals which have been confounded under the name
of worms (_Vers_) with other animals very differently organized, I
immediately employed the consideration of this new fact in rendering my
classification more perfect, and in my course of the year 10 (1802) I
established the class of Annelides, a class which I have placed after
the molluscs and before the crustaceans, as their known organization
requires." He first established this class in his _Recherches sur les
corps vivans_ (1802), but it was several years before it was adopted by
naturalists.

The next work in which Lamarck deals with the classification of the
invertebrates is his _Discours d'ouverture du Cours des Animaux sans
Vertèbres_, published in 1806.

On page 70 he speaks of the animal chain or series, from the monad to
man, ascending from the most simple to the most complex. The monad is
one of his _Polypes amorphs_, and he says that it is the most simple
animal form, the most like the original germ (_ébauche_) from which
living bodies have descended. From the monad nature passes to the
Volvox, Proteus (Amoeba), and Vibrio. From them are derived the
_Polypes rotifères_ and other "Radiaires," and then the Vers,
Arachnides, and Crustacea. On page 77 a tabular view is presented, as
follows:

    1. _Les Mollusques._
    2. _Les Cirrhipèdes._
    3. _Les Annelides._
    4. _Les Crustacés._
    5. _Les Arachnides._
    6. _Les Insectes._
    7. _Les Vers._
    8. _Les Radiaires._
    9. _Les Polypes._

It will be seen that at this date two additional classes are proposed
and defined--_i.e._, the Annelides and the Cirrhipedes, though the class
of Annelida was first privately characterized in his lectures for 1802.

The elimination of the barnacles or Cirrhipedes from the molluscs was a
decided step in advance, and was a proof of the acute observation and
sound judgment of Lamarck. He says that this class is still very
imperfectly known and its position doubtful, and adds: "The Cirrhipedes
have up to the present time been placed among the molluscs, but
although certain of them closely approach them in some respects, they
have a special character which compels us to separate them. In short, in
the genera best known the feet of these animals are distinctly
articulated and even crustaceous (_crustacés_)." He does not refer to
the nervous system, but this is done in his next work. It will be
remembered that Cuvier overlooked this feature of the jointed limbs, and
also the crustaceous-like nervous system of the barnacles, and allowed
them to remain among the molluscs, notwithstanding the decisive step
taken by Lamarck. It was not until many years after (1830) that Thompson
proved by their life-history that barnacles are true crustacea.

In the _Philosophie zoologique_ the ten classes of the invertebrates are
arranged in the following order:

    _Les Mollusques._
    _Les Cirrhipèdes._
    _Les Annelides._
    _Les Crustacés._
    _Les Arachnides._
    _Les Insectes._
    _Les Vers._
    _Les Radiaires._
    _Les Polypes._
    _Les Infusoires._

At the end of the second volume Lamarck gives a tabular view on a page
by itself (p. 463), showing his conception of the origin of the
different groups of animals. This is the first phylogeny or genealogical
tree ever published.


TABLEAU

Servant à montrer l'origine des differens animaux.

    Vers.               Infusoires.
       .                Polypes.
          .             Radiaires.
             .
            .   .
           .       .
          .           .
         .             Insectes.
        .              Arachnides.
    Annelides.         Crustacés.
    Cirrhipèdes.
    Mollusques.
        .
           .
              .
            Poissons.
            Reptiles.
                .
             .     .
          .           .
    Oiseaux.             .
       .                    .
       .                       .
    Monotrèmes.         M. Amphibies.
                         .
                       .    .
                     .         .
                   .  .    M. Cétacés.
                 .     .
               .      M. Ongulés.
       M. Onguiculés.


The next innovation made by Lamarck in the _Extrait du Cours de
Zoologie_, in 1812, was not a happy one. In this work he distributed the
fourteen classes of the animal kingdom into three groups, which he named
_Animaux Apathiques_, _Sensibles_, and _Intelligens_. In this
physiologico-psychological base for a classification he unwisely
departed from his usual more solid foundation of anatomical structure,
and the results were worthless. He, however, repeats it in his great
work, _Histoire naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres_ (1815-1822).

The sponges were by Cuvier, and also by Lamarck, accorded a position
among the Polypes, near Alcyonium, which represents the latter's
_Polypiers empâtés_; and it is interesting to notice that, for many
years remaining among the Protozoa, meanwhile even by Agassiz regarded
as vegetables, they were by Haeckel restored to a position among the
Coelenterates, though for over twenty years they have by some American
zoölogists been more correctly regarded as a separate phylum.[124]
Lamarck also separated the seals and morses from the cetacea. Adopting
his idea, Cuvier referred the seals to an order of carnivora.

Another interesting matter, to which Professor Lacaze-Duthiers has
called attention in his interesting letter on p. 77, is the position
assigned _Lucernaria_ among his _Radiaires molasses_ near what are now
Ctenophora and Medusæ, though one would have supposed he would, from
its superficial resemblance to polyps, have placed it among the polyps.
To Lamarck we are also indebted for the establishment in 1818 of the
molluscan group of Heteropoda.

Lamarck's acuteness is also shown in the fact that, whereas Cuvier
placed them among the acephalous molluscs, he did not regard the
ascidians as molluscs at all, but places them in a class by themselves
under the name of _Tunicata_, following the Sipunculus worms. Yet he
allowed them to remain near the Holothurians (then including Sipunculus)
in his group of _Radiaires echinodermes_, between the latter and the
Vers. He differs from Cuvier in regarding the tunic as the homologue of
the shell of Lamellibranches, remarking that it differs in being
muscular and contractile.

Lamarck's fame as a zoölogist rests chiefly on this great work. It
elicited the highest praise from his contemporaries. Besides containing
the innovations made in the classification of the animal kingdom, which
he had published in previous works, it was a summary of all which was
then known of the invertebrate classes, thus forming a most convenient
hand-book, since it mentioned all the known genera and all the known
species except those of the insects, of which only the types are
mentioned. It passed through two editions, and still is not without
value to the working systematist.

In his _Histoire des Progrès des Sciences naturelles_ Cuvier does it
justice. Referring to the earlier volume, he states that "it has
extended immensely the knowledge, especially by a new distribution, of
the shelled molluscs ... M. de Lamarck has established with as much
care as sagacity the genera of shells." Again he says, in noticing the
three first volumes: "The great detail into which M. de Lamarck has
entered, the new species he has described, renders his work very
valuable to naturalists, and renders most desirable its prompt
continuation, especially from the knowledge we have of means which this
experienced professor possesses to carry to a high degree of perfection
the enumeration which he will give us of the shells" (_Oeuvres
complètes de Buffon_, 1828, t. 31, p. 354).

"His excellences," says Cleland, speaking of Lamarck as a scientific
observer, "were width of scope, fertility of ideas, and a preëminent
faculty of precise description, arising not only from a singularly terse
style, but from a clear insight into both the distinctive features and
the resemblance of forms" (_Encyc. Britannica_, Art. LAMARCK).

The work, moreover, is remarkable for being the first one to begin with
the simplest and to end with the most highly developed forms.

Lamarck's special line of study was the Mollusca. How his work is still
regarded by malacologists is shown by the following letter from our
leading student of molluscs, Dr. W. H. Dall:


        "SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
        "UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
            "_November 4, 1899._

  "Lamarck was one of the best naturalists of his time, when geniuses
  abounded. His work was the first well-marked step toward a natural
  system as opposed to the formalities of Linné. He owed something to
  Cuvier, yet he knew how to utilize the work in anatomy offered by
  Cuvier in making a natural classification. His failing eyesight,
  which obliged him latterly to trust to the eyes of others; his
  poverty and trials of various kinds, more than excuse the occasional
  slips which we find in some of the later volumes of the _Animaux
  sans Vertèbres_. These are rather of the character of typographical
  errors than faults of scheme or principle.

  "The work of Lamarck is really the foundation of rational natural
  malacological classification; practically all that came before his
  time was artificial in comparison. Work that came later was in the
  line of expansion and elaboration of Lamarck's, without any change
  of principle. Only with the application of embryology and
  microscopical work of the most modern type has there come any
  essential change of method, and this is rather a new method of
  getting at the facts than any fundamental change in the way of using
  them when found. I shall await your work on Lamarck's biography with
  great interest.

    "I remain,
        "Yours sincerely,
            "WILLIAM H. DALL."


FOOTNOTES:

[119] During the same period (1803-1829) Russia sent out expeditions to
the North and Northeast, accompanied by the zoölogists Tilesius,
Langsdorff, Chamisso, Eschscholtz, and Brandt, all of them of German
birth and education. From 1823 to 1850 England fitted up and sent out
exploring expeditions commanded by Beechey, Fitzroy, Belcher, Ross,
Franklin, and Stanley, the naturalists of which were Bennett, Owen,
Darwin, Adams, and Huxley. From Germany, less of a maritime country, at
a later date, Humboldt, Spix, Prince Wied-Neuwied, Natterer, Perty, and
others made memorable exploring expeditions and journeys.

[120] These papers have been mercilessly criticised by Blainville in his
"Cuvier et Geoffroy St. Hilaire." In the second article--_i.e._, on the
anatomy of the limpet--Cuvier, in considering the organs, follows no
definite plan; he gives a description "_tout-a-fait fantastique_" of the
muscular fibres of the foot, and among other errors in this first essay
on comparative anatomy he mistakes the tongue for the intromittent
organ; the salivary glands, and what is probably part of the brain,
being regarded as the testes, with other "_erreurs matérielles
inconcevables, même à l'époque ou elle fut rédigée_." In his first
article he mistakes a species of the myriapod genus Glomeris for the
isopod genus Armadillo. In this he is corrected by the editor (possibly
Lamarck himself), who remarks in a footnote that the forms to which
M. Cuvier refers under the name of Armadillo are veritable species of
Julus. We have verified these criticisms of Cuvier by reference to his
papers in the "Journal." It is of interest to note, as Blainville does,
that Cuvier at this period admits that there is a passage from the
Isopoda to the armadilloes and Julus. Cuvier, then twenty-three years
old, wrote: "_Nous sommes donc descendus par degrès, des Écrevisses aux
Squilles, de celles-ci aux Aselles, puis aux Cloportes, aux Armadilles
et aux Ïules_" (_Journal d'Hist. nat._, tom. ii., p. 29, 1792). These
errors, as regards the limpet, were afterwards corrected by Cuvier
(though he does not refer to his original papers) in his _Mémoires pour
servir à l'Histoire et à l'Anatomie des Mollusques_ (1817).

[121] _Tableau élémentaire de l'Histoire naturelle des Animaux._ Paris,
An VI. (1798). 8vo, pp. 710. With 14 plates.

[122] Tome i., p. 123.

[123] In his _Histoire des Progrès des Sciences naturelles_ Cuvier takes
to himself part of the credit of founding the class Crustacea, stating
that Aristotle had already placed them in a class by themselves, and
adding, "_MM. Cuvier et de Lamarck les en out distingués par des
caractères de premier ordre tirés de leur circulation._" Undoubtedly
Cuvier described the circulation, but it was Lamarck who actually
realized the taxonomic importance of this feature and placed them in a
distinct class.

[124] See A. Hyatt's _Revision of North American Poriferæ_, Part II.
(Boston, 1877, p. 11); also the present writer in his _Text-book of
Zoölogy_ (1878).




CHAPTER XIII

THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON AND OF GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE


Of the French precursors of Lamarck there were four--Duret (1609), De
Maillet (1748), Robinet (1768), and Buffon. The opinions of the first
three could hardly be taken seriously, as they were crude and fantastic,
though involving the idea of descent. The suggestions and hypotheses of
Buffon and of Erasmus Darwin were of quite a different order, and
deserve careful consideration.

[Illustration: MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED, 1793-1829]

George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was born in 1707 at Montbard,
Burgundy, in the same year as Linné. He died at Paris in 1788, at the
age of eighty-one years. He inherited a large property from his father,
who was a councillor of the parliament of Burgundy. He studied at Dijon,
and travelled abroad. Buffon was rich, but, greatly to his credit,
devoted all his life to the care of the Royal Garden and to writing his
works, being a most prolific author. He was not an observer, not even a
closet naturalist. "I have passed," he is reported to have said, "fifty
years at my desk." Appointed in 1739, when he was thirty-two years old,
Intendant of the Royal Garden, he divided his time between his retreat
at Montbard and Paris, spending four months in Paris and the remainder
of the year at Montbard, away from the distractions and dissipations of
the capital. It is significant that he wrote his great _Histoire
naturelle_ at Montbard and not at Paris, where were the collections of
natural history.

His biographer, Flourens, says: "What dominates in the character of
Buffon is elevation, force, the love of greatness and glory; he loved
magnificence in everything. His fine figure, his majestic air, seemed to
have some relation with the greatness of his genius; and nature had
refused him none of those qualities which could attract the attention of
mankind.

"Nothing is better known than the _naïveté_ of his self-esteem; he
admired himself with perfect honesty, frankly, but good-naturedly."

He was once asked how many great men he could really mention; he
answered: "Five--Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." His
admirable style gained him immediate reputation and glory throughout the
world of letters. His famous epigram, "_Le style est l'homme même_" is
familiar to every one. That his moral courage was scarcely of a high
order is proved by his little affair with the theologians of the
Sorbonne. Buffon was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made.

His forte was that of a brilliant writer and most industrious compiler,
a popularizer of science. He was at times a bold thinker; but his
prudence, not to say timidity, in presenting in his ironical way his
thoughts on the origin of things, is annoying, for we do not always
understand what Buffon did really believe about the mutability or the
fixity of species, as too plain speaking in the days he wrote often led
to persecution and personal hazard.[125]

His cosmological ideas were based on those of Burnet and Leibnitz. His
geological notions were founded on the labors of Palissy, Steno,
Woodward, and Whiston. He depended upon his friend Daubenton for
anatomical facts, and on Gueneau de Montbéliard and the Abbé Bexon for
his zoölogical data. As Flourens says, "Buffon was not exactly an
observer: others observed and discovered for him. He discovered,
himself, the observations of others; he sought for ideas, others sought
facts for him." How fulsome his eulogists were is seen in the case of
Flourens, who capped the climax in exclaiming, "Buffon is Leibnitz with
the eloquence of Plato;" and he adds, "He did not write for savants: he
wrote for all mankind." No one now reads Buffon, while the works of
Réaumur, who preceded him, are nearly as valuable as ever, since they
are packed with careful observations.

The experiments of Redi, of Swammerdam, and of Vallisneri, and the
observations of Réaumur, had no effect on Buffon, who maintained that,
of the different forms of genesis, "spontaneous generation" is not only
the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient--namely,
the primitive and the most universal.[126]

Buffon by nature was unsystematic, and he possessed little of the spirit
or aim of the true investigator. He left no technical papers or memoirs,
or what we would call contributions to science. In his history of
animals he began with the domestic breeds, and then described those of
most general, popular interest, those most known. He knew, as
Malesherbes claimed, little about the works even of Linné and other
systematists, neither grasping their principles nor apparently caring to
know their methods. His single positive addition to zoölogical science
was generalizations on the geographical distribution of animals. He
recognized that the animals of the tropical and southern portions of the
old and new worlds were entirely unlike, while those of North America
and northern Eurasia were in many cases the same.

We will first bring together, as Flourens and also Butler have done, his
scattered fragmentary views, or rather suggestions, on the fixity of
species, and then present his thoughts on the mutability of species.
"The species" is then "an abstract and general term."[127] "There only
exist individuals and _suites_ of individuals, that is to say,
species."[128] He also says that Nature "imprints on each species its
unalterable characters;" that "each species has an equal right to
creation;"[129] that species, even those nearest allied, "are separated
by an interval over which nature cannot pass;"[130] and that "each
species having been independently created, the first individuals have
served as a model for their descendants."[131]

Buffon, however, shows the true scientific spirit in speaking of final
causes.

  "The pig," he says, "is not formed as an original, special, and
  perfect type; its type is compounded of that of many other animals.
  It has parts which are evidently useless, or which, at any rate, it
  cannot use." ... "But we, ever on the lookout to refer all parts to
  a certain end--when we can see no apparent use for them, suppose
  them to have hidden uses, and imagine connections which are without
  foundation, and serve only to obscure our perception of Nature as
  she really is: we fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her
  true character, which is to inquire into the 'how' of these
  things--into the manner in which Nature acts--and that we substitute
  for this true object a vain idea, seeking to divine the 'why'--the
  ends which she has proposed in acting" (tome v., p. 104, 1755, _ex_
  Butler).

The volumes of the _Histoire naturelle_ on animals, beginning with
tome iv., appeared in the years 1753 to 1767, or over a period of
fourteen years. Butler, in his _Evolution, Old and New_, effectually
disposes of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's statement that at the
beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the fixity of species,
while from 1761 to 1766 he declares for variability. But Butler asserts
from his reading of the first edition that "from the very first chapter
onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow
his belief in it.... The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find
that the idea that Buffon took a less advanced position in his old age
than he had taken in middle life is also without foundation"[132]
(p. 104).

But he had more to say on the other side, that of the mutability of
species, and it is these tentative views that his commentators have
assumed to have been his real sentiments or belief, and for this reason
place Buffon among the evolutionists, though he had little or no idea of
evolution in the enlarged and thoroughgoing sense of Lamarck.

He states, however, that the presence of callosities on the legs of the
camel and llama "are the unmistakable results of rubbing or friction; so
also with the callosities of baboons and the pouched monkeys, and the
double soles of man's feet."[133] In this point he anticipates Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck. As we shall see, however, his notions were much less
firmly grounded than those of Erasmus Darwin, who was a close observer
as well as a profound thinker.

In his chapter on the _Dégénération des Animaux_, or, as it is
translated, "modification of animals," Buffon insists that the three
causes are climate, food, and domestication. The examples he gives are
the sheep, which having originated, as he thought, from the mufflon,
shows marked changes. The ox varies under the influence of food; reared
where the pasturage is rich it is twice the size of those living in a
dry country. The races of the torrid zones bear a hump on their
shoulders; "the zebu, the buffalo, is, in short, only a variety, only a
race of our domestic ox." He attributed the camel's hump to domesticity.
He refers the changes of color in the northern hare to the simple change
of seasons.

He is most explicit in referring to the agency of climate, and also to
time and to the uniformity of nature's processes in causing variation.
Writing in 1756 he says:

  "If we consider each species in the different climates which it
  inhabits we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and
  form; they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from
  the climate in which they live. These changes are only made slowly
  and imperceptibly. Nature's great workman is time. He marches ever
  with an even pace and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by
  degrees, gradations, and succession he does all things; and the
  changes which he works--at first imperceptible--become little by
  little perceptible, and show themselves eventually in results about
  which there can be no mistake. Nevertheless, animals in a free, wild
  state are perhaps less subject than any other living beings, man not
  excepted, to alterations, changes, and variations of all kinds.
  Being free to choose their own food and climate, they vary less than
  domestic animals vary."[134]

The Buffonian factor of the direct influence of climate is not in
general of so thoroughgoing a character as usually supposed by the
commentators of Buffon. He generally applies it to the superficial
changes, such as the increase or decrease in the amount of hair, or
similar modifications not usually regarded as specific characters. The
modifications due to the direct influence of climate may be effected, he
says, within even a few generations.

Under the head of geographical distribution (in tome ix., 1761), in
which subject Buffon made his most original contribution to exact
biology, he claims to have been the first "even to have suspected" that
not a single tropical species is common to both eastern and western
continents, but that the animals common to both continents are those
adapted to a temperate or cold climate. He even anticipates the subject
of migration in past geological times by supposing that those forms
travelled from the Old World either over some land still unknown, or
"more probably" over territory which has long since been submerged.[135]

  The mammoth "was certainly the greatest and strongest of all
  quadrupeds, but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller,
  feebler, and less remarkable species must have perished without
  leaving us any traces or even hints of their having existed? How
  many other species have changed their nature, that is to say,
  become perfected or degraded, through great changes in the
  distribution of land and ocean; through the cultivation or neglect
  of the country which they inhabit; through the long-continued
  effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer the same
  animals that they once were. Yet of all living beings after man the
  quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form most
  constant; birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still more
  again than these; and if we descend to plants, which certainly
  cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at
  the readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease
  with which they change their forms and adopt new natures."[136]

The following passages, debarring the error of deriving all the American
from the Old World forms, and the mistake in supposing that the American
forms grew smaller than their ancestors in the Old World, certainly
smack of the principle of isolation and segregation, and this is
Buffon's most important contribution to the theory of descent.

  "It is probable, then, that all the animals of the New World are
  derived from congeners in the Old, without any deviation from the
  ordinary course of nature. We may believe that, having become
  separated in the lapse of ages by vast oceans and countries which
  they could not traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and
  derived impressions from, a climate which has itself been modified
  so as to become a new one through the operations of those same
  causes which dissociated the individuals of the Old and the New
  World from one another; thus in the course of time they have grown
  smaller and changed their characters. This, however, should not
  prevent our classifying them as different species now, for the
  difference is no less real though it dates from the creation.
  _Nature, I maintain, is in a state of continual flux and movement.
  It is enough for man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time,
  and throw but a glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try
  and perceive what she may have been in former times and what one day
  she may attain to._"[137]

Buffon thus suggests the principle of the struggle for existence to
prevent overcrowding, resulting in the maintenance of the balance of
nature:

  "It may be said that the movement of Nature turns upon two immovable
  pivots--one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to all
  species; the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce the
  results of that fecundity, and leave throughout time nearly the same
  quantity of individuals in every species; ... destruction and
  sterility follow closely upon excessive fecundity, and,
  independently of the contagion which follows inevitably upon
  overcrowding, each species has its own special sources of death and
  destruction, which are of themselves sufficient to compensate for
  excess in any past generation."[138]

He also adds, "The species the least perfect, the most delicate, the
most unwieldy, the least active, the most unarmed, etc., have already
disappeared or will disappear."[139]

On one occasion, in writing on the dog, he anticipates Erasmus Darwin
and Lamarck in ascribing to the direct cause of modification the inner
feelings of the animal modified, change of condition being the indirect
cause.[140] He, however, did not suggest the idea of the transmission of
acquired characters by heredity, and does not mention the word heredity.

These are all the facts he stated; but though not an observer, Buffon
was a broad thinker, and was led from these few data to generalize, as
he could well do, from the breadth of his knowledge of geology gained
from the works of his predecessors, from Leibnitz to Woodward and
Whiston.

  "After the rapid glance," he says, "at these variations, which
  indicate to us the special changes undergone by each species, there
  arises a more important consideration, and the view of which is
  broader; it is that of the transformation (_changement_) of the
  species themselves; it is that more ancient modification which has
  gone on from time immemorial, which seems to have been made in each
  family or, if we prefer, in each of the genera in which were
  comprised more or less allied species."[141]

In the beginning of his first volume he states "that we can descend by
almost imperceptible degrees from the most perfect creature to the most
formless matter--from the most highly organized animal to the most
entirely inorganic substance. We will recognize this gradation as the
great work of nature; and we will observe it not only as regards size
and form, but also in respect of movements and in the successive
generations of every species."

  "Hence," he continues, "arises the difficulty of arriving at any
  perfect system or method in dealing either with nature as a whole or
  even with any single one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so
  subtle that we are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. Nature
  knows nothing about our classifications, and does not choose to lend
  herself to them without reasons. We therefore see a number of
  intermediate species and objects which it is very hard to classify,
  and which of necessity derange our system, whatever it may be."[142]

This is all true, and was probably felt by Buffon's predecessors, but it
does not imply that he thought these forms had descended from one
another.

  "In thus comparing," he adds, "all the animals, and placing them
  each in its proper genus, we shall find that the two hundred species
  whose history we have given may be reduced to a quite small number
  of families or principal sources from which it is not impossible
  that all the others may have issued."[143]

He then establishes, on the one hand, nine species which he regarded as
isolated, and, on the other, fifteen principal genera, primitive sources
or, as we would say, ancestral forms, from which he derived all the
animals (mammals) known to him.

Hence he believed that he could derive the dog, the jackal, the wolf,
and the fox from a single one of these four species; yet he remarks,
_per contra_, in 1753:

  "Although we cannot demonstrate that the production of a species by
  modification is a thing impossible to nature, the number of
  contrary probabilities is so enormous that, even philosophically, we
  can scarcely doubt it; for if any species has been produced by the
  modification of another, if the species of ass has been derived from
  that of the horse, this could have been done only successively and
  by gradual steps: there would have been between the horse and ass a
  great number of intermediate animals, the first of which would
  gradually differ from the nature of the horse, and the last would
  gradually approach that of the ass; and why do we not see to-day the
  representatives, the descendants of those intermediate species? Why
  are only the two extremes living?" (tome iv., p. 390). "If we once
  admit that the ass belongs to the horse family, and that it only
  differs from it because it has been modified (_dégénéré_), we may
  likewise say that the monkey is of the same family as man, that it
  is a modified man, that man and the monkey have had a common origin
  like the horse and ass, that each family has had but a single
  source, and even that all the animals have come from a single
  animal, which in the succession of ages has produced, while
  perfecting and modifying itself, all the races of other animals"
  (tome iv., p. 382). "If it were known that in the animals there had
  been, I do not say several species, but a single one which had been
  produced by modification from another species; if it were true that
  the ass is only a modified horse, there would be no limit to the
  power of nature, and we would not be wrong in supposing that from a
  single being she has known how to derive, with time, all the other
  organized beings" (_ibid._, p. 382).

The next sentence, however, translated, reads as follows:

  "But no. It is certain from revelation that all animals have alike
  been favored with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that
  the first pair of every species issued fully formed from the hands
  of the Creator" (tome iv., p. 383).

In which of these views did Buffon really believe? Yet they appear in
the same volume, and not at different periods of his life.

He actually does say in the same volume (iv., p. 358): "It is not
impossible that all species may be derivations (_issues_)." In the same
volume also (p. 215) he remarks:

  "There is in nature a general prototype in each species on which
  each individual is modelled, but which seems, in being realized, to
  change or become perfected by circumstances; so that, relatively to
  certain qualities, there is a singular (_bizarre_) variation in
  appearance in the succession of individuals, and at the same time a
  constancy in the entire species which appears to be admirable."

And yet we find him saying at the same period of his life, in the
previous volume, that species "are the only beings in nature, beings
perpetual, as ancient, as permanent as she."[144] A few pages farther on
in the same volume of the same work, apparently written at the same
time, he is strongly and stoutly anti-evolutional, affirming: "The
imprint of each species is a type whose principal features are graven in
characters forever ineffaceable and permanent."[145]

In this volume (iv., p. 55) he remarks that the senses, whether in man
or in animals, may be greatly developed by exercise.

The impression left on the mind, after reading Buffon, is that even if
he threw out these suggestions and then retracted them, from fear of
annoyance or even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did not
himself always take them seriously, but rather jotted them down as
passing thoughts. Certainly he did not present them in the formal,
forcible, and scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. The result is that
the tentative views of Buffon, which have to be with much research
extracted from the forty-four volumes of his works, would now be
regarded as in a degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared
thirty-four years before Lamarck's theory, and though not epoch-making,
they are such as will render the name of Buffon memorable for all time.


ÉTIENNE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE.

Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was born at Étampes, April 15, 1772. He
died in Paris in 1844. He was destined for the church, but his tastes
were for a scientific career. His acquaintance with the Abbé Haüy and
Daubenton led him to study mineralogy. He was the means of liberating
Haüy from a political prison; the Abbé, as the result of the events of
August, 1792, being promptly set free at the request of the Academy of
Sciences. The young Geoffroy was in his turn aided by the illustrious
Haüy, who obtained for him the position of sub-guardian and demonstrator
of mineralogy in the Cabinet of Natural History. At the early age of
twenty-one years, as we have seen, he was elected professor of zoölogy
in the museum, in charge of the department of mammals and birds. He was
the means of securing for Cuvier, then of his own age, a position in the
museum as professor-adjunct of comparative anatomy. For two years (1795
and 1796) the two youthful savants were inseparable, sharing the same
apartments, the same table, the same amusements, the same studies, and
their scientific papers were prepared in company and signed in common.

[Illustration: É. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE]

Geoffroy became a member of the great scientific commission sent to
Egypt by Napoleon (1789-1802). By his boldness and presence of mind he,
with Savigny and the botanist Delille, saved the treasures which at
Alexandria had fallen into the hands of the English general in command.
In 1808 he was charged by Napoleon with the duty of organizing public
instruction in Portugal. Here again, by his address and firmness, he
saved the collections and exchanges made there from the hands of the
English. When thirty-six years old he was elected a member of the
Institute.

In 1818 he began to discuss philosophical anatomy, the doctrine of
homologies; he also studied the embryology of the mammals, and was the
founder of teratology. It was he who discovered the vestigial teeth of
the baleen whale and those of embryo birds, and the bearing of this on
the doctrine of descent must have been obvious to him.

As early as 1795, before Lamarck had changed his views as to the
stability of species, the young Geoffroy, then twenty-three years old,
dared to claim that species may be only "_les diverses dégénérations
d'un même type_." These views he did not abandon, nor, on the other
hand, did he actively promulgate them. It was not until thirty years
later, in his memoir on the anatomy of the gavials, that he began the
series of his works bearing on the question of species. In 1831 was held
the famous debates between himself and Cuvier in the Academy of
Sciences. But the contest was not so much on the causes of the variation
of species as on the doctrine of homologies and the unity of
organization in the animal kingdom.

In fact, Geoffroy did not adopt the views peculiar to his old friend
Lamarck, but was rather a follower of Buffon. His views were preceded by
two premises.

The species is only "_fixé sous la raison du maintien de l'état
conditionnel de son milieu ambiant_."

It is modified, it changes, if the environment (_milieu ambiant_)
varies, and according to the extent (selon la portée) of the variations
of the latter.[146]

As the result, among recent or living beings there are no essential
differences as regards them--"_c'est le même cours d'événements_," or
"_la même marche d'excitation_."[147]

On the other hand, the _monde ambiant_ having undergone more or less
considerable change from one geological epoch to another, the atmosphere
having even varied in its chemical composition, and the conditions of
respiration having been thus modified,[148] the beings then living would
differ in structure from their ancestors of ancient times, and would
differ from them according "to the degree of the modifying power."[149]
Again, he says, "The animals living to-day have been derived by a series
of uninterrupted generations from the extinct animals of the
antediluvian world."[150] He gave as an example the crocodiles of the
present day, which he believed to have descended from the fossil forms.
While he admitted the possibility of one type passing into another,
separated by characters of more than generic value, he always, according
to his son Isidore, rejected the view which made all the living species
descend "_d'une espèce antediluvienne primitive_."[151] It will be seen
that Geoffroy St. Hilaire's views were chiefly based on palæontological
evidence. He was throughout broad and philosophical, and his eloquent
demonstration in his _Philosophie anatomique_ of the doctrine of
homologies served to prepare the way for modern morphology, and affords
one of the foundation stones on which rests the theory of descent.
Though temporarily vanquished in the debate with Cuvier, who was a
forceful debater and represented the views then prevalent, a later
generation acknowledges that he was in the right, and remembers him as
one of the founders of evolution.


FOOTNOTES:

[125] Mr. Morley, in his _Rousseau_, gives a startling picture of the
hostility of the parliament at the period (1762) when Buffon's works
appeared. Not only was Rousseau hunted out of France, and his books
burnt by the public executioner, but there was "hardly a single man of
letters of that time who escaped arbitrary imprisonment" (p. 270); among
others thus imprisoned was Diderot. At this time (1750-1765) Malesherbes
(born 1721, guillotined 1794), one of the "best instructed and most
enlightened men of the century," was Directeur de la Libraire. "The
process was this: a book was submitted to him; he named a censor for it;
on the censor's report the director gave or refused permission to print
or required alterations. Even after these formalities were complied
with, the book was liable to a decree of the royal council, a decree of
the parliament, or else a lettre-de-cachet might send the author to the
Bastille" (Morley's _Rousseau_, p. 266).

[126] _Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière._ 1st edition.
Imprimerie royale. Paris: 1749-1804, 44 vols. 4to. Tome iv., p. 357.
This is the best of all the editions of Buffon, says Flourens, from
whose _Histoire des Travaux et des Idées de Buffon_, 1st edition (Paris,
1844), we take some of the quotations and references, which, however, we
have verified. We have also quoted some passages from Buffon translated
by Butler in his "Evolution, Old and New" (London, 1879).

[127] _L. c._, tome iv., p. 384 (1753). This is the first volume on the
animals below man.

[128] Tome xi., p. 369 (1764).

[129] Tome xii., p. 3 (1764).

[130] Tome v., p. 59 (1755).

[131] Tome xiii., p. vii. (1765).

[132] Osborn adopts, without warrant we think, Isidore Geoffroy
St. Hilaire's notion, stating that he "shows clearly that his opinions
marked three periods." The writings of Isidore, the son of Étienne
Geoffroy, have not the vigor, exactness, or depth of those of his
father.

[133] Tome xiv., p. 326 (1766).

[134] Tome vi., pp. 59-60 (1756).

[135] Butler, _l. c._, pp. 145-146.

[136] Tome ix., p. 127, 1761 (_ex_ Butler).

[137] Tome ix., p. 127, 1761 (_ex_ Butler).

[138] Tome vi., p. 252, 1756 (quoted from Butler, _l. c._, pp. 123-126).

[139] Quoted from Osborn, who takes it from De Lanessan.

[140] Butler, _l. c._, p. 122 (from Buffon, tome v., 1755).

[141] Tome xiv., p. 335 (1766).

[142] Tome i., p. 13.

[143] Tome xiv., p. 358.

[144] Tome xiii., p. i.

[145] Tome xiii., p. ix.

[146] _Études progressives d'un Naturaliste_, etc., 1835, p. 107.

[147] _Ibid._

[148] _Sur l'Influence du Monde ambiant pour modifier les Formes animaux
(Mémoires Acad. Sciences_, xii., 1833, pp. 63, 75).

[149] _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Gavials (Mémoires du Muséum
d'Histoire naturelle_), xii., p. 97 (1825).

[150] _Sur l'Influence du Monde ambiant_, p. 74.

[151] _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, xxxi., p. 487, 1836 (quoted by
I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire); _Histoire nat. gén. des Règnes organiques_,
ii., 2^e partie; also _Résumé_, p. 30 (1859).




CHAPTER XIV

THE VIEWS OF ERASMUS DARWIN


Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born in 1731, or
twenty-four years after Buffon. He was an English country physician with
a large practice, and not only interested in philosophy, mechanics, and
natural science, but given to didactic rhyming, as evinced by _The
Botanical Garden_ and _The Loves of the Plants_, the latter of which was
translated into French in 1800, and into Italian in 1805. His "shrewd
and homely mind," his powers of keen observation and strong common sense
were revealed in his celebrated work _Zoonomia_, which was published in
two volumes in 1794, and translated into German in 1795-99. He was not a
zoölogist, published no separate scientific articles, and his striking
and original views on evolution, which were so far in advance of his
time, appear mostly in the section on "Generation," comprising 173 pages
of his _Zoonomia_,[152] which was mainly a medical work. The book was
widely read, excited much discussion, and his views decided opposition.
Samuel Butler in his _Evolution, Old and New_ (1879) remarks: "Paley's
_Natural Theology_ is written throughout at the _Zoonomia_, though he
is careful, _moro suo_, never to mention this work by name. Paley's
success was probably one of the chief causes of the neglect into which
the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this country." Dr. Darwin
died in the same year (1802) as that in which the _Natural Theology_ was
published.

Krause also writes of the reception given by his contemporaries to his
"physio-philosophical ideas." "They spoke of his wild and eccentric
fancies, and the expression 'Darwinising' (as employed, for example, by
the poet Coleridge when writing on Stillingfleet) was accepted in
England nearly as the antithesis of sober biological investigation."[153]

The grandson of Erasmus Darwin had little appreciation of the views of
him of whom, through atavic heredity, he was the intellectual and
scientific child. "It is curious," he says in the 'Historical Sketch' of
the _Origin of Species_--"it is curious how largely my grandfather,
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of
opinion of Lamarck in his _Zoonomia_ (vol. i., pp. 500-510), published
in 1794." It seems a little strange that Charles Darwin did not devote a
few lines to stating just what his ancestor's views were, for certain of
them, as we shall see, are anticipations of his own.

The views of Erasmus Darwin may thus be summarily stated:

1. All animals have originated "from a single living filament" (p. 230),
or, stated in other words, referring to the warm-blooded animals alone,
"one is led to conclude that they have alike been produced from a
similar living filament" (p. 236); and again he expresses the conjecture
that one and the same kind of living filament is and has been the cause
of all organic life (p. 244). It does not follow that he was a
"spermist," since he strongly argued against the incasement or
"evolution" theory of Bonnet.

2. Changes produced by differences of climate and even seasons. Thus
"the sheep of warm climates are covered with hair instead of wool, and
the hares and partridges of the latitudes which are long buried in snow
become white during the winter months" (p. 234). Only a passing
reference is made to this factor, and the effects of domestication are
but cursorily referred to. In this respect Darwin's views differed much
from Buffon's, with whom they were the primary causes in the
modification of animals.

The other factors or agencies are not referred to by Buffon, showing
that Darwin was not indebted to Buffon, but thought out the matter in
his own independent way.

3. "Fifthly, from their first rudiment or primordium to the termination
of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations, which are
in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires
and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or
of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are
transmitted to their posterity" (p. 237). The three great objects of
desire are, he says, "lust, hunger, and security" (p. 237).

4. Contests of the males for the possession of the females, or law of
battle. Under the head of desire he dwells on the desire of the male for
the exclusive possession of the female; and "these have acquired weapons
to combat each other for this purpose," as the very thick, shield-like
horny skin on the shoulders of the boar, and his tusks, the horns of the
stag, the spurs of cocks and quails. "The final cause," he says, "of
this contest among the males seems to be that the strongest and most
active animal should propagate the species, which should thence become
improved" (p. 238). This savors so strongly of sexual selection that we
wonder very much that Charles Darwin repudiated it as "erroneous." It is
not mentioned by Lamarck, nor is Dr. Darwin's statement of the exertions
and desires of animals at all similar to Lamarck's, who could not have
borrowed his ideas on appetency from Darwin or any other predecessor.

5. The transmission of characters acquired during the lifetime of the
parent. This is suggested in the following crude way:

  "Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes produced in the
  species of animals before their maturity, as, for example, when the
  offspring reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by
  accident or cultivation; or the changes produced by the mixture of
  species, as in mules; or the changes produced probably by the
  exuberance of nourishment supplied to the fetus, as in monstrous
  births with additional limbs, many of these enormities of shape are
  propagated and continued as a variety, at least, if not as a new
  species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional
  claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw, and
  with wings to their feet, and of others without rumps. Mr. Buffon
  mentions a breed of dogs without tails, which are common at Rome and
  Naples, which he supposes to have been produced by a custom, long
  established, of cutting their tails close off. There are many kinds
  of pigeons admired for their peculiarities which are more or less
  thus produced and propagated."[154]

6. The means of procuring food has, he says, "diversified the forms of
all species of animals. Thus the nose of the swine has become hard for
the purpose of turning up the soil in search of insects and of roots.
The trunk of the elephant is an elongation of the nose for the purpose
of pulling down the branches of trees for his food, and for taking up
water without bending his knees. Beasts of prey have acquired strong
jaws or talons. Cattle have acquired a rough tongue and a rough palate
to pull off the blades of grass, as cows and sheep. Some birds have
acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired
beaks to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer
kinds of flowers, or the buds of trees, as the finches. Other birds have
acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of insects
or roots, as woodcocks, and others broad ones to filtrate the water of
lakes and to retain aquatic insects. All which seem to have been
gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavors of
the creature to supply the want of food, and to have been delivered to
their posterity with constant improvement of them for the purpose
required" (p. 238).

7. The third great want among animals is that of security, which seems
to have diversified the forms of their bodies and the color of them;
these consist in the means of escaping other animals more powerful than
themselves.[155] Hence some animals have acquired wings instead of legs,
as the smaller birds, for purposes of escape. Others, great length of
fin or of membrane, as the flying-fish and the bat. Others have acquired
hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the Echinus marinus (p. 239).

  "The colors of insects," he says, "and many smaller animals
  contribute to conceal them from the dangers which prey upon them.
  Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; earthworms
  the color of the earth which they inhabit; butterflies, which
  frequent flowers, are colored like them; small birds which frequent
  hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-colored
  bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk, who
  passes under them or over them. Those birds which are much amongst
  flowers, as the goldfinch (_Fringilla carduelis_), are furnished
  with vivid colors. The lark, partridge, hare, are the color of dry
  vegetables or earth on which they rest. And frogs vary their color
  with the mud of the streams which they frequent; and those which
  live on trees are green. Fish, which are generally suspended in
  water, and swallows, which are generally suspended in air, have
  their backs the color of the distant ground, and their bellies of
  the sky. In the colder climates many of these become white during
  the existence of the snows. Hence there is apparent design in the
  colors of animals, whilst those of vegetables seem consequent to
  the other properties of the materials which possess them" (_The
  Loves of the Plants_, p. 38, note).

In his _Zoonomia_ (§ xxxix., vi.) Darwin also speaks of the efficient
cause of the various colors of the eggs of birds and of the hair and
feathers of animals which are adapted to the purpose of concealment.
"Thus the snake, and wild cat, and leopard are so colored as to resemble
dark leaves and their light interstices" (p. 248). The eggs of
hedge-birds are greenish, with dark spots; those of crows and magpies,
which are seen from beneath through wicker nests, are white, with dark
spots; and those of larks and partridges are russet or brown, like their
nests or situations. He adds: "The final cause of their colors is easily
understood, as they serve some purpose of the animal, but the efficient
cause would seem almost beyond conjecture." Of all this subject of
protective mimicry thus sketched out by the older Darwin, we find no
hint or trace in any of Lamarck's writings.

8. Great length of time. He speaks of the "great length of time since
the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the
commencement of the history of mankind" (p. 240).

In this connection it may be observed that Dr. Darwin emphatically
opposes the preformation views of Haller and Bonnet in these words:

  "Many ingenious philosophers have found so great difficulty in
  conceiving the manner of the reproduction of animals that they have
  supposed all the numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in
  the animal originally created, and that these infinitely minute
  forms are only evolved or distended as the embryon increases in the
  womb. This idea, besides being unsupported by any analogy we are
  acquainted with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than
  we can readily admit" (p. 317); and in another place he claims that
  "we cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by
  apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial
  nest of germs included one within another like the cups of a
  conjurer" (p. 235).

9. To explain instinct he suggests that the young simply imitate the
acts or example of their parents. He says that wild birds choose spring
as their building time "from the acquired knowledge that the mild
temperature of the air is more convenient for hatching their eggs;" and
further on, referring to the fact that seed-eating animals generally
produce their young in spring, he suggests that it is "part of the
traditional knowledge which they learn from the example of their
parents."[156]

10. Hybridity. He refers in a cursory way to the changes produced by the
mixture of species, as in mules.

Of these ten factors or principles, and other views of Dr. Darwin, some
are similar to those of Lamarck, while others are directly opposed.
There are therefore no good grounds for supposing that Lamarck was
indebted to Darwin for his views. Thus Erasmus Darwin supposes that the
formation of organs precedes their use. As he says, "The lungs must be
previously formed before their exertions to obtain fresh air can exist;
the throat or oesophagus must be formed previous to the sensation or
appetites of hunger and thirst" (_Zoonomia_, p. 222). Again (_Zoonomia_,
i., p. 498), "From hence I conclude that with the acquisition of new
parts, new sensations and new desires, as well as new powers, are
produced" (p. 226). Lamarck does not carry his doctrine of
use-inheritance so far as Erasmus Darwin, who claimed, what some still
maintain at the present day, that the offspring reproduces "the effects
produced upon the parent by accident or cultivation."

The idea that all animals have descended from a similar living filament
is expressed in a more modern and scientific way by Lamarck, who derived
them from monads.

The Erasmus Darwin way of stating that the transformations of animals
are in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their
desires and aversions, etc., is stated in a quite different way by
Lamarck.

Finally the principle of law of battle, or the combat between the males
for the possession of the females, with the result "that the strongest
and most active animal should propagate the species," is not hinted at
by Lamarck. This view, on the contrary, is one of the fundamental
principles of the doctrine of natural selection, and was made use of by
Charles Darwin and others. So also Erasmus anticipated Charles Darwin in
the third great want of "security," in seeking which the forms and
colors of animals have been modified. This is an anticipation of the
principle of protective mimicry, so much discussed in these days by
Darwin, Wallace, and others, and which was not even mentioned by
Lamarck. From the internal evidence of Lamarck's writings we therefore
infer that he was in no way indebted to Erasmus Darwin for any hints or
ideas.[157]


FOOTNOTES:

[152] Vol. ii., 3d edition. Our references are to this edition.

[153] Krause, _The Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin_, footnote on
p. 134: "See 'Athenæum,' March, 1875, p. 423."

[154] _Zoonomia_, i., p. 505 (3d edition, p. 335).

[155] The subject of protective mimicry is more explicitly stated by
Dr. Darwin in his earlier book, _The Loves of the Plants_, and, as
Krause states, though Rösel von Rosenhof in his _Insekten-Belustigungen_
(Nurnberg, 1746) describes the resemblance which geometric caterpillars,
and also certain moths when in repose, present to dry twigs, and thus
conceal themselves, "this group of phenomena seems to have been first
regarded from a more general point of view by Dr. Darwin."

[156] _Zoonomia_, vol. i., p. 170.

[157] Mr. Samuel Butler, in his _Evolution, Old and New_, taking it for
granted that Lamarck was "a partisan of immutability till 1801,"
intimates that "the secret of this sudden conversion must be found in a
French translation by M. Deleuze of Dr. Darwin's poem, _The Loves of the
Plants_, which appeared in 1800. Lamarck--the most eminent botanist of
his time--was sure to have heard of and seen this, and would probably
know the translator, who would be able to give him a fair idea of the
_Zoonomia_" (p. 258).

But this notion seems disproved by the fact that Lamarck delivered his
famous lecture, published in 1801, during the last of April or in the
first half of May, 1800. The views then presented must have been formed
in his mind at least for some time--perhaps a year or more--previous,
and were the result of no sudden inspiration, least of all from any
information given him by Deleuze, whom he probably never met. If Lamarck
had actually seen and read the _Zoonomia_ he would have been manly
enough to have given him credit for any novel ideas. Besides that, as we
have already seen, the internal evidence shows that Lamarck's views were
in some important points entirely different from those of Erasmus
Darwin, and were conceptions original with the French zoölogist.

Krause in his excellent essay on the scientific works of Erasmus Darwin
(1879) refers to Lamarck as "evidently a disciple of Darwin," stating
that Lamarck worked out "in all directions" Erasmus Darwin's principles
of "will and active efforts" (p. 212).




CHAPTER XV

WHEN DID LAMARCK CHANGE HIS VIEWS REGARDING THE MUTABILITY OF SPECIES?


Lamarck's mind was essentially philosophical. He was given to inquiring
into the causes and origin of things. When thirty-two years old he wrote
his "Researches on the Causes of the Principal Physical Facts," though
this work did not appear from the press until 1794, when he was fifty
years of age. In this treatise he inquires into the origin of compounds
and of minerals; also he conceived that all the rocks as well as all
chemical compounds and minerals originated from organic life. These
inquiries were reiterated in his "Memoirs on Physics and Natural
History," which appeared in 1797, when he was fifty-three years old.

The atmosphere of philosophic France, as well as of England and Germany
in the eighteenth century, was charged with inquiries into the origin of
things material, though more especially of things immaterial. It was a
period of energetic thinking. Whether Lamarck had read the works of
these philosophers or not we have no means of knowing. Buffon, we know,
was influenced by Leibnitz.

Did Buffon's guarded suggestions have no influence on the young Lamarck?
He enjoyed his friendship and patronage in early life, frequenting his
house, and was for a time the travelling companion of Buffon's son. It
should seem most natural that he would have been personally influenced
by his great predecessor, but we see no indubitable trace of such
influence in his writings. Lamarckism is not Buffonism. It comprises in
the main quite a different, more varied and comprehensive set of
factors.[158]

Was Lamarck influenced by the biological writings of Haller, Bonnet, or
by the philosophic views of Condillac, whose _Essai sur l'Origine des
Connaissances humaines_ appeared in 1786; or of Condorcet, whom he must
personally have known, and whose _Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des
Progrès de l'Esprit humain_ was published in 1794?[159] In one case only
in Lamarck's works do we find reference to these thinkers.

Was Lamarck, as the result of his botanical studies from 1768 to 1793,
and being puzzled, as systematic botanists are, by the variations of the
more plastic species of plants, led to deny the fixity of species?

We have been unable to find any indications of a change of views in his
botanical writings, though his papers are prefaced by philosophical
reflections.

It would indeed be interesting to know what led Lamarck to change his
views. Without any explanation as to the reason from his own pen, we
are led to suppose that his studies on the invertebrates, his perception
of the gradations in the animal scale from monad to man, together with
his inherent propensity to inquire into the origin of things, also his
studies on fossils, as well as the broadening nature of his zoölogical
investigations and his meditations during the closing years of the
eighteenth century, must gradually have led to a change of views.

It was said by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire that Lamarck was "long a
partisan of the immutability of species,"[160] but the use of the word
"partisan" appears to be quite incorrect, as he only in one instance
expresses such views.

The only place where we have seen any statement of Lamarck's earlier
opinions is in his _Recherches sur les Causes des principaux Faits
physiques_, which was written, as the "advertisement" states, "about
eighteen years" before its publication in 1794. The treatise was
actually presented April 22, 1780, to the Académie des Sciences.[161] It
will be seen by the following passages, which we translate, that, as
Huxley states, this view presents a striking contrast to those to be
found in the _Philosophie zoologique_:

  "685. Although my sole object in this article [article premier,
  p. 188] has only been to treat of the physical cause of the
  maintenance of life of organic beings, still I have ventured to urge
  at the outset that the existence of these astonishing beings by no
  means depends on nature; that all which is meant by the word nature
  cannot give life--namely, that all the faculties of matter, added to
  all possible circumstances, and even to the activity pervading the
  universe, cannot produce a being endowed with the power of organic
  movement, capable of reproducing its like, and subject to death.

  "686. All the individuals of this nature which exist are derived
  from similar individuals, which, all taken together, constitute the
  entire species. However, I believe that it is as impossible for man
  to know the physical origin of the first individual of each species
  as to assign also physically the cause of the existence of matter or
  of the whole universe. This is at least what the result of my
  knowledge and reflection leads me to think. If there exist any
  varieties produced by the action of circumstances, these varieties
  do not change the nature of the species (_ces variétés ne dénaturent
  point les espèces_); but doubtless we are often deceived in
  indicating as a species what is only a variety; and I perceive that
  this error may be of consequence in reasoning on this subject"
  (tome ii., pp. 213-214).

It must apparently remain a matter of uncertainty whether this opinion,
so decisively stated, was that of Lamarck at thirty-two years of age,
and which he allowed to remain, as then stated, for eighteen years, or
whether he inserted it when reading the proofs in 1794. It would seem as
if it were the expression of his views when a botanist and a young man.

In his _Mémoires de Physique et d'Histoire naturelle_, which was
published in 1797, there is nothing said bearing on the stability of
species, and though his work is largely a repetition of the
_Recherches_, the author omits the passages quoted above. Was this
period of six years, between 1794 and 1800, given to a reconsideration
of the subject resulting in favor of the doctrine of descent?

Huxley quotes these passages, and then in a footnote (p. 211), after
stating that Lamarck's _Recherches_ was not published before 1794, and
stating that at that time it presumably expressed Lamarck's mature
views, adds: "It would be interesting to know what brought about the
change of opinion manifested in the _Recherches sur l'Organisation des
Corps vivans_, published only seven years later."

In the appendix to this book (1802) he thus refers to his change of
views: "I have for a long time thought that _species_ were constant in
nature, and that they were constituted by the individuals which belong
to each of them. I am now convinced that I was in error in this respect,
and that in reality only individuals exist in nature" (p. 141).

Some clew in answer to the question as to when Lamarck changed his views
is afforded by an almost casual statement by Lamarck in the addition
entitled _Sur les Fossiles_ to his _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_
(1801), where, after speaking of fossils as extremely valuable monuments
for the study of the revolutions the earth has passed through at
different regions on its surface, and of the changes living beings have
there themselves successively undergone, he adds in parenthesis: "_Dans
mes leçons j'ai toujours insiste sur ces considérations._" Are we to
infer from this that these evolutionary views were expressed in his
first course, or in one of the earlier courses of zoölogical
lectures--_i.e._, soon after his appointment in 1793--and if not then,
at least one or two, or perhaps several, years before the year 1800? For
even if the change in his views were comparatively sudden, he must have
meditated upon the subject for months and even, perhaps, years, before
finally committing himself to these views in print. So strong and bold a
thinker as Lamarck had already shown himself in these fields of thought,
and one so inflexible and unyielding in holding to an opinion once
formed as he, must have arrived at such views only after long
reflection. There is also every reason to suppose that Lamarck's theory
of descent was conceived by himself alone, from the evidence which lay
before him in the plants and animals he had so well studied for the
preceding thirty years, and that his inspiration came directly from
nature and not from Buffon, and least of all from the writings of
Erasmus Darwin.


FOOTNOTES:

[158] See the comparative summary of the views of the founders of
evolution at the end of Chapter XVII.

[159] While Rousseau was living at Montmorency "his thought wandered
confusedly round the notion of a treatise to be called 'Sensitive
Morality or the Materialism of the Age,' the object of which was to
examine the influence of external agencies, such as light, darkness,
sound, seasons, food, noise, silence, motion, rest, on our corporeal
machine, and thus, indirectly, upon the soul also."--_Rousseau_, by John
Morley (p. 164).

[160] Butler's _Evolution, Old and New_ (p. 244), and Isidore Geoffroy
St. Hilaire's _Histoire naturelle générale_, tome ii., p. 404 (1859).

[161] After looking in vain through both volumes of the _Recherches_ for
some expression of Lamarck's earlier views, I found a mention of it in
Osborn's _From the Greeks to Darwin_, p. 152, and reference to Huxley's
_Evolution in Biology_, 1878 ("Darwiniana," p. 210), where the
paragraphs translated above are quoted in the original.




CHAPTER XVI

THE STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAMARCK'S VIEWS ON EVOLUTION BEFORE THE
PUBLICATION OF HIS _PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE_


I. _From the Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_ (1801).

The first occasion on which, so far as his published writings show,
Lamarck expressed his evolutional views was in the opening lecture[162]
of his course on the invertebrate animals delivered in the spring of
1800, and published in 1801 as a preface to his _Système des Animaux
sans Vertèbres_, this being the first sketch or prodromus of his later
great work on the invertebrate animals. In the preface of this book,
referring to the opening lecture, he says: "I have glanced at some
important and philosophic views that the nature and limits of this work
do not permit me to develop, but which I propose to take up elsewhere
with the details necessary to show on what facts they are based, and
with certain explanations which would prevent any one from
misunderstanding them." It may be inferred from this that he had for
some time previous meditated on this theme. It will now be interesting
to see what factors of evolution Lamarck employed in this first sketch
of his theory.

After stating the distinctions existing between the vertebrate and
invertebrate animals, and referring to the great diversity of animal
forms, he goes on to say that Nature began with the most simply
organized, and having formed them, "then with the aid of much time and
of favorable circumstances she formed all the others."

  "It appears, as I have already said, that _time_ and _favorable
  conditions_ are the two principal means which nature has employed in
  giving existence to all her productions. We know that for her time
  has no limit, and that consequently she has it always at her
  disposal.

  "As to the circumstances of which she has had need and of which she
  makes use every day in order to cause her productions to vary, we
  can say that they are in a manner inexhaustible.

  "The essential ones arise from the influence and from all the
  environing media (_milieux_), from the diversity of local causes
  (_diversité des lieux_), of habits, of movements, of action, finally
  of means of living, of preserving their lives, of defending
  themselves, of multiplying themselves, etc. Moreover, as the result
  of these different influences the faculties, developed and
  strengthened by use (_usage_), became diversified by the new habits
  maintained for long ages, and by slow degrees the structure, the
  consistence, in a word the nature, the condition of the parts and of
  the organs consequently participating in all these influences,
  became preserved and were propagated by generation.[163]

  "The bird which necessity (_besoin_) drives to the water to find
  there the prey needed for its subsistence separates the toes of its
  feet when it wishes to strike the water[164] and move on its
  surface. The skin, which unites these toes at their base, contracts
  in this way the habit of extending itself. Thus in time the broad
  membranes which connect the toes of ducks, geese, etc., are formed
  in the way indicated.

  "But one accustomed to live perched on trees has necessarily the end
  of the toes lengthened and shaped in another way. Its claws are
  elongated, sharpened, and are curved and bent so as to seize the
  branches on which it so often rests.

  "Likewise we perceive that the shore bird, which does not care to
  swim, but which, however, is obliged (a _besoin_) to approach the
  water to obtain its prey, will be continually in danger of sinking
  in the mud, but wishing to act so that its body shall not fall into
  the liquid, it will contract the habit of extending and lengthening
  its feet. Hence it will result in the generations of these birds
  which continue to live in this manner, that the individuals will
  find themselves raised as if on stilts, on long naked feet; namely,
  denuded of feathers up to and often above the thighs.

  "I could here pass in review all the classes, all the orders, all
  the genera and species of animals which exist, and make it apparent
  that the conformation of individuals and of their parts, their
  organs, their faculties, etc., is entirely the result of
  circumstances to which the race of each species has been subjected
  by nature.

  "I could prove that it is not the form either of the body or of its
  parts which gives rise to habits, to the mode of life of animals,
  but, on the contrary, it is the habits, the mode of life, and all
  the influential circumstances which have, with time, made up the
  form of the body and of the parts of animals. With the new forms new
  faculties have been acquired, and gradually nature has reached the
  state in which we actually see her" (pp. 12-15).

He then points out the gradation which exists from the most simple
animal up to the most composite, since from the monad, which, so to
speak, is only an animated point, up to the mammals, and from them up to
man, there is evidently a shaded gradation in the structure of all the
animals. So also among the plants there is a graduated series from the
simplest, such as _Mucor viridescens_, up to the most complicated plant.
But he hastens to say that by this regular gradation in the complication
of the organization he does not mean to infer the existence of a linear
series, with regular intervals between the species and genera:

  "Such a series does not exist; but I speak of a series almost
  regularly graduated in the principal groups (_masses_) such as the
  great families; series most assuredly existing, both among animals
  and among plants, but which, as regards genera and especially
  species, form in many places lateral ramifications, whose
  extremities offer truly isolated points."

This is the first time in the history of biological science that we have
stated in so scientific, broad, and modern form the essential
principles of evolution. Lamarck insists that time without limit and
favorable conditions are the two principal means or factors in the
production of plants and animals. Under the head of favorable conditions
he enumerates variations in climate, temperature, the action of the
environment, the diversity of local causes, change of habits, movement,
action, variation in means of living, of preservation of life, of means
of defence, and varying modes of reproduction. As the result of the
action of these different factors, the faculties of animals, developed
and strengthened by use, become diversified by the new habits, so that
by slow degrees the new structures and organs thus arising become
preserved and transmitted by heredity.

In this address it should be noticed that nothing is said of willing and
of internal feeling, which have been so much misunderstood and
ridiculed, or of the direct or indirect action of the environment. He
does speak of the bird as wishing to strike the water, but this,
liberally interpreted, is as much a physiological impulse as a mental
desire. No reference also is made to geographical isolation, a factor
which he afterwards briefly mentioned.

Although Lamarck does not mention the principle of selection, he refers
in the following way to competition, or at least to the checks on the
too rapid multiplication of the lower invertebrates:

  "So were it not for the immense consumption as food which is made in
  nature of animals which compose the lower orders of the animal
  kingdom, these animals would soon overpower and perhaps destroy, by
  their enormous numbers, the more highly organized and perfect
  animals which compose the first classes and the first orders of this
  kingdom, so great is the difference in the means and facility of
  multiplying between the two.

  "But nature has anticipated the dangerous effects of this vast power
  of reproduction and multiplication. She has prevented it on the one
  hand by considerably limiting the duration of life of these beings
  so simply organized which compose the lower classes, and especially
  the lowest orders of the animal kingdom. On the other hand, both by
  making these animals the prey of each other, thus incessantly
  reducing their numbers, and also by determining through the
  diversity of climates the localities where they could exist, and by
  the variety of seasons--_i.e._, by the influences of different
  atmospheric conditions--the time during which they could maintain
  their existence.

  "By means of these wise precautions of nature everything is well
  balanced and in order. Individuals multiply, propagate, and die in
  different ways. No species predominates up to the point of effecting
  the extinction of another, except, perhaps, in the highest classes,
  where the multiplication of the individuals is slow and difficult;
  and as the result of this state of things we conceive that in
  general species are preserved" (p. 22).

Here we have in anticipation the doctrine of Malthus, which, as will be
remembered, so much impressed Charles Darwin, and led him in part to
work out his principle of natural selection.

The author then taking up other subjects, first asserts that among the
changes that animals and plants unceasingly bring about by their
production and _débris_, it is not the largest and most perfect animals
which have caused the most considerable changes, but rather the coral
polyps, etc.[165] He then, after dilating on the value of the study of
the invertebrate animals, proceeds to define them, and closes his
lecture by describing the seven classes into which he divides this
group.


II. _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans, 1802 (Opening
Discourse)._

The following is an abstract with translations of the most important
passages relating to evolution:

That the portion of the animal kingdom treated in these lectures
comprises more species than all the other groups taken together is,
however, the least of those considerations which should interest my
hearers.

  "It is the group containing the most curious forms, the richest in
  marvels of every kind, the most astonishing, especially from the
  singular facts of organization that they present, though it is that
  hitherto the least considered under these grand points of view.

  "How much better than learning the names and characters of all the
  species is it to learn of the origin, relation, and mode of
  existence of all the natural productions with which we are
  surrounded.


  "_First Part: Progress in structure of living beings in proportion
  as circumstances favor them._

  "When we give continued attention to the examination of the
  organization of different living beings, to that of different
  systems which this organization presents in each organic kingdom,
  finally to certain changes which are seen to be undergone in certain
  circumstances, we are convinced:

  "1. That the nature of organic movement is not only to develop the
  organization but also to multiply the organs and to fulfil the
  functions, and that at the outset this organic movement continually
  tends to restrict to functions special to certain parts the
  functions which were at first general--_i.e._, common to all parts
  of the body;

  "2. That the result of _nutrition_ is not only to supply to the
  developing organization what the organic movement tends to form, but
  besides, also by a forced inequality between the matters which are
  assimilated and those which are dissipated by losses, this function
  at a certain term of the duration of life causes a progressive
  deterioration of the organs, so that as a necessary consequence it
  inevitably causes death;

  "3. That the property of the movement of the fluids in the parts
  which contain them is to break out passages, places of deposit, and
  outlets; to there create canals and consequently different organs;
  to cause these canals, as well as the organs, to vary on account of
  the diversity both of the movements and of the nature of the fluids
  which give rise to them; finally to enlarge, elongate, to gradually
  divide and solidify [the walls of] these canals and these organs by
  the matters which form and incessantly separate the fluids which are
  there in movement, and one part of which is assimilated and added to
  the organs, while the other is rejected and cast out;

  "4. That the state of organization in each organism has been
  gradually acquired by the progress of the influences of the movement
  of fluids, and by those changes that these fluids have there
  continually undergone in their nature and their condition through
  the habitual succession of their losses and of their renewals;

  "5. That each organization and each form acquired by this course of
  things and by the circumstances which there have concurred, were
  preserved and transmitted successively by generation [heredity]
  until new modifications of these organizations and of these forms
  have been acquired by the same means and by new circumstances;

  "6. Finally, that from the uninterrupted concurrence of these causes
  or from these laws of nature, together with much time and with an
  almost inconceivable diversity of influential circumstances, organic
  beings of all the orders have been successively formed.

  "Considerations so extraordinary, relatively to the ideas that the
  vulgar have generally formed on the nature and origin of living
  bodies, will be naturally regarded by you as stretches of the
  imagination unless I hasten to lay before you some observations and
  facts which supply the most complete evidence.

  "From the point of view of knowledge based on observation the
  philosophic naturalist feels convinced that it is in that which is
  called the lowest classes of the two organic kingdoms--_i.e._, in
  those which comprise the most simply organized beings--that we can
  collect facts the most luminous and observations the most decisive
  on the _production_ and the reproduction of the living beings in
  question; on the causes of the formation of the organs of these
  wonderful beings; and on those of their developments, of their
  diversity and their multiplicity, which increase with the concourse
  of generations, of times, and of influential circumstances.

  "Hence we may be assured that it is only among the singular beings
  of these lowest classes, and especially in the lowest orders of
  these classes, that it is possible to find on both sides the
  primitive germs of life, and consequently the germs of the most
  important faculties of animality and vegetality."


_Modification of the organization from one end to the other of the
animal chain._

"One is forced," he says, "to recognize that the totality of existing
animals constitute _a series of groups_ forming a true chain, and that
there exists from one end to the other of this chain a gradual
modification in the structure of the animals composing it, as also a
proportionate diminution in the number of faculties of these animals
from the highest to the lowest (the first germs), these being without
doubt the form with which nature began, with the aid of much time and
favorable circumstances, to form all the others."

He then begins with the mammals and descends to molluscs, annelids, and
insects, down to the polyps, "as it is better to proceed from the known
to the unknown;" but farther on (p. 38) he finally remarks:

  "Ascend from the most simple to the most compound, depart from the
  most imperfect animalcule and ascend along the scale up to the
  animal richest in structure and faculties; constantly preserve the
  order of relation in the group, then you will hold the true thread
  which connects all the productions of nature; you will have a just
  idea of its progress, and you will be convinced that the most simple
  of its living productions have successively given existence to all
  the others.

  "_The series which constitutes the animal scale resides in the
  distribution of the groups, and not in that of the individuals and
  species._

  "I have already said[166] that by this shaded graduation in the
  complication of structure I do not mean to speak of the existence
  of a linear and regular series of species or even genera: such a
  series does not exist. But I speak of a quite regularly graduated
  series in the principal groups, _i.e._, in the principal system of
  organizations known, which give rise to classes and to great
  families, series most assuredly existing both among animals and
  plants, although in the consideration of genera, and especially in
  that of species, it offers many lateral ramifications whose
  extremities are truly isolated points.

  "However, although there has been denied, in a very modern work, the
  existence in the animal kingdom of a single series, natural and at
  the same time graduated, in the composition of the organization of
  beings which it comprehends, series in truth necessarily formed of
  groups subordinated to each other as regards structure and not of
  isolated species or genera, I ask where is the well-informed
  naturalist who would now present a different order in the
  arrangement of the twelve classes of the animal kingdom of which I
  have just given an account?

  "I have already stated what I think of this view, which has seemed
  sublime to some moderns, and indorsed by _Professor Hermann_."

Each distinct group or mass of forms has, he says, its peculiar system
of essential organs, but each organ considered by itself does not follow
as regular a course in its degradations (modifications).

  "Indeed, the least important organs, or those least essential to
  life, are not always in relation to each other in their improvement
  or their degradation; and an organ which in one species is atrophied
  may be very perfect in another. These irregular variations in the
  perfecting and in the degradation of non-essential organs are due to
  the fact that these organs are oftener than the others submitted to
  the influences of external circumstances, and give rise to a
  diversity of species so considerable and so singularly ordered that
  instead of being able to arrange them, like the groups, in a single
  simple linear series under the form of a regular graduated scale,
  these very species often form around the groups of which they are
  part lateral ramifications, the extremities of which offer points
  truly isolated.

  "There is needed, in order to change each internal system of
  organization, a combination of more influential circumstances, and
  of more prolonged duration than to alter and modify the external
  organs.

  "I have observed, however, that, when circumstances demand, nature
  passes from one system to another without making a leap, provided
  they are allies. It is, indeed, by this faculty that she has come to
  form them all in succession, in proceeding from the simple to the
  more complex.

  "It is so true that she has the power, that she passes from one
  system to the other, not only in two different families which are
  allied, but she also passes from one system to the other in the same
  individual.

  "The systems of organization which admit as organs of respiration
  true lungs are nearer to systems which admit gills than those which
  require tracheæ. Thus not only does nature pass from gills to lungs
  in allied classes and families, as seen in fishes and reptiles, but
  in the latter she passes even during the life of the same
  individual, which successively possesses each system. We know that
  the frog in the tadpole state respires by gills, while in the more
  perfect state of frog it respires by lungs. We never see that nature
  passes from a system with tracheæ to a system with lungs.

  "_It is not the organs, i.e., the nature and form of the parts of
  the body of an animal, which give rise to the special habits and
  faculties, but, on the contrary, its habits, its mode of life, and
  the circumstances in which individuals are placed, which have, with
  time, brought about the form of its body, the number and condition
  of its organs, finally the faculties which it possesses._

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Time and favorable circumstances are the two principal means which
  nature employs to give existence to all her productions. We know
  that time has for her no limit, and that consequently she has it
  always at her disposition.

  "As to the circumstances of which she has need (_besoin_) and which
  she employs every day to bring about variations in all that she
  continues to produce, we can say that they are in her in some degree
  inexhaustible.

  "The principal ones arise from the influence of climate, from that
  of different temperatures, of the atmosphere, and from all
  environing surroundings (_milieux_); from that of the diversity of
  places and their situations; from that of the most ordinary habitual
  movements, of actions the most frequent; finally from that of the
  means of preservation, of the mode of life, of defence, of
  reproduction, etc.

  "Moreover, as the result of these different influences the faculties
  increase and strengthen themselves by use, diversify themselves by
  the new habits preserved through long periods, and insensibly the
  conformation, the consistence--in a word, the nature and state of
  the parts and also of the organs--consequently participate in all
  these influences, are preserved and propagate themselves by
  generation" (_Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, p. 12).

       *       *       *       *       *

  "It is easy for any one to see that the habit of exercising an organ
  in every living being which has not reached the term of diminution
  of its faculties not only makes this organ more perfect, but even
  makes it acquire developments and dimensions which insensibly change
  it, with the result that with time it renders it very different from
  the same organ considered in another organism which has not, or has
  but slightly, exercised it. It is also very easy to prove that the
  constant lack of exercise of an organ gradually reduces it and ends
  by atrophying it."

Then follow the facts regarding the mole, spalax, ant-eater, and the
lack of teeth in birds, the origin of shore birds, swimming birds and
perching birds, which are stated farther on.

  "Thus the efforts in any direction, maintained for a long time or
  made habitually by certain parts of a living body, to satisfy the
  needs called out (_exigés_) by nature or by circumstances, develop
  these parts and cause them to acquire dimensions and a form which
  they never would have obtained if these efforts had not become an
  habitual action of the animals which have exercised them.
  Observations made on all the animals known would furnish examples of
  this.

  "When the will determines an animal to any kind of action, the
  organs whose function it is to execute this action are then
  immediately provoked by the flowing there of subtile fluids, which
  become the determining cause of movements which perform the action
  in question. A multitude of observations support this fact, which
  now no one would doubt.

  "It results from this that multiplied repetitions of these acts of
  organization strengthen, extend, develop, and even create the organs
  which are there needed. It is only necessary to closely observe that
  which is everywhere happening in this respect to firmly convince
  ourselves of this cause of developments and organic changes.

  "However, each change acquired in an organ by habitual use
  sufficient to have formed (_opéré_) it is preserved by generation,
  if it is common to the individuals which unite in the reproduction
  of their kind. Finally, this change propagates itself and is then
  handed down (_se passe_) to all the individuals which succeed and
  which are submitted to the same circumstances, without their having
  been obliged to acquire it by the means which have really created
  it.

  "Besides, in the unions between the sexes the intermixtures between
  individuals which have different qualities or forms are necessarily
  opposed to the constant propagation of these qualities and forms. We
  see that which in man, who is exposed to such different
  circumstances which influence individuals, prevents the qualities of
  accidental defects which they have happened to acquire from being
  preserved and propagated by heredity (_génération_).

  "You can now understand how, by such means and an inexhaustible
  diversity of circumstances, nature, with sufficient length of time,
  has been able to and should produce all these results.

  "If I should choose here to pass in review all the classes, orders,
  genera, and species of animals in existence I could make you see
  that the structure of individuals and their organs, faculties, etc.,
  is solely the result of circumstances to which each species and all
  its races have been subjected by nature, and of habits that the
  individuals of this species have been obliged to contract.

  "The influences of localities and of temperatures are so striking
  that naturalists have not hesitated to recognize the effects on the
  structure, the developments, and the faculties of the living bodies
  subject to them.

  "We have long known that the animals inhabiting the torrid zone are
  very different from those which live in the other zones. Buffon has
  remarked that even in latitudes almost the same the animals of the
  new continent are not the same as those of the old.

  "Finally the Count Lacépède, wishing to give to this well-founded
  fact the precision which he believed it susceptible, has traced
  twenty-six zoölogical divisions on the dry parts of the globe, and
  eighteen over the ocean; but there are many other influences than
  those which depend on localities and temperatures.

  "Everything tends, then, to prove my assertion--namely, that it is
  not the form either of the body or of its parts which has given rise
  to habits and to the mode of life of animals, but, on the contrary,
  it is the habits, the mode of life, and all the other influential
  circumstances which have with time produced the form of the bodies
  and organs of animals. With new forms new faculties have been
  acquired, and gradually nature has arrived at the state where we
  actually see it.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Finally as it is only at that extremity of the animal kingdom where
  occur the most simply organized animals that we meet those which may
  be regarded as the true germs of animality, and it is the same at
  the same end of the vegetable series; is it not at this end of the
  scale, both animal and vegetable, that nature has commenced and
  recommenced without ceasing the first germ of her living production?
  Who is there, in a word, who does not see that the process of
  perfection of those of these first germs which circumstances have
  favored will gradually and after the lapse of time give rise to all
  the degrees of perfection and of the composition of the
  organization, from which will result this multiplicity and this
  diversity of living beings of all orders with which the exterior
  surface of our globe is almost everywhere filled or covered?

  "Indeed, if the manner (_usage_) of life tends to develop the
  organization, and even to form and multiply the organs, as the state
  of an animal which has just been born proves it, compared to that
  where it finds itself when it has reached the term where its organs
  (beginning to deteriorate) cease to make new developments; if, then,
  each particular organ undergoes remarkable changes, according as it
  is exercised and according to the manner of which I have shown you
  some examples, you will understand that in carrying you to the end
  of the animal chain where are found the most simple organizations,
  and that in considering among these organizations those whose
  simplicity is so great that they lie at the very door of the
  creative power of nature, then this same nature--that is to say, the
  state of things which exist--has been to form directly the first
  beginnings of organization; she has been able, consequently, by the
  manner of life and the aid of circumstances which favor its
  duration, to progressively render perfect its work, and to carry it
  to the point where we now see it.

  "Time is wanting to present to you the series of results of my
  researches on this interesting subject, and to develop--

  "1. What really is life.

  "2. How nature herself creates the first traces of organization in
  appropriate groups where it had not existed.

  "3. How the organic or vital movement is excited by it and held
  together with the aid of a stimulating and active cause which she
  has at her disposal in abundance in certain climates and in certain
  seasons of the year.

  "4. Finally, how this organic movement, by the influence of its
  duration and by that of the multitude of circumstances which modify
  its effects, develops, arranges, and gradually complicates the
  organs of the living body which possesses them.

  "Such has been without doubt the will of the infinite wisdom which
  reigns throughout nature; and such is effectively the order of
  things clearly indicated by the observation of all the facts which
  relate to them." (End of the opening discourse.)


  APPENDIX (p. 141).

  _On Species in Living Bodies._

  "I have for a long time thought that _species_ were constant in
  nature, and that they were constituted by the individuals which
  belong to each of them.

  "I am now convinced that I was in error in this respect, and that in
  reality only individuals exist in nature.

  "The origin of this error, which I have shared with many naturalists
  who still hold it, arises from _the long duration_, in relation to
  us, _of the same state of things_ in each place which each organism
  inhabits; but this duration of the same state of things for each
  place has its limits, and with much time it makes changes in each
  point of the surface of the globe, which produces changes in every
  kind of circumstances for the organisms which inhabit it.

  "Indeed, we may now be assured that nothing on the surface of the
  terrestrial globe remains in the same state. Everything, after a
  while, undergoes different changes, more or less prompt, according
  to the nature of the objects and of circumstances. Elevated areas
  are constantly being lowered, and the loose material carried down to
  the lowlands. The beds of rivers, of streams, of even the sea, are
  gradually removed and changed, as also the climate;[167] in a word,
  the whole surface of the earth gradually undergoes a change in
  situation, form, nature, and aspect. We see on every hand what
  ascertained facts prove; it is only necessary to observe and to give
  one's attention to be convinced of it.

  "However, if, relatively to living beings, the diversity of
  circumstances brings about for them a diversity of habits, a
  different mode of existence, and, as the result, modifications in
  their organs and in the shape of their parts, one should believe
  that very gradually every living body whatever would vary in its
  organization and its form.

  "All the modifications that each living being will have undergone as
  the result of change of circumstances which have influenced its
  nature will doubtless be propagated by heredity (_génération_). But
  as new modifications will necessarily continue to operate, however
  slowly, not only will there continually be found new species, new
  genera, and even new orders, but each species will vary in some part
  of its structure and its form.

  "I very well know that to our eyes there seems in this respect a
  _stability_ which we believe to be constant, although it is not so
  truly; for a very great number of centuries may form a period
  insufficient for the changes of which I speak to be marked enough
  for us to appreciate them. Thus we say that the flamingo
  (_Phoenicopterus_) has always had as long legs and as long a neck
  as have those with which we are familiar; finally, it is said that
  all animals whose history has been transmitted for 2,000 or 3,000
  years are always the same, and have lost or acquired nothing in the
  process of perfection of their organs and in the form of their
  different parts. We may be assured that this appearance of
  _stability_ of things in nature will always be taken for reality by
  the average of mankind, because in general it judges everything only
  relatively to itself.

  "But, I repeat, this consideration which has given rise to the
  admitted error owes its source to the very great slowness of the
  changes which have gone on. A little attention given to the facts
  which I am about to cite will afford the strongest proof of my
  assertion.

  "What nature does after a great length of time we do every day by
  suddenly changing, as regards a living being, the circumstances in
  which it and all the individuals of its species are placed.

  "All botanists know that the plants which they transplant from their
  natal spot into gardens for cultivation there gradually undergo
  changes which in the end render them unrecognizable. Many plants
  naturally very hairy, there become glabrous or nearly so; a quantity
  of those which were procumbent or trailing there have erect stems;
  others lose their spines or their thorns; finally, the dimensions of
  parts undergo changes which the circumstances of their new situation
  infallibly produce. This is so well known that botanists prefer not
  to describe them, at least unless they are newly cultivated. Is not
  wheat (_Triticum sativum_) a plant brought by man to the state
  wherein we actually see it, which otherwise I could not believe? Who
  can now say in what place its like lives in nature?

  "To these known facts I will add others still more remarkable, and
  which confirm the view that change of circumstances operates to
  change the parts of living organisms.

  "When _Ranunculus aquatilis_ lives in deep water, all it can do
  while growing is to make the end of its stalks reach the surface of
  the water where they flourish. Then all the leaves of the plant are
  finely cut or pinked.[168] If the same plant grows in shallower
  water the growth of its stalks may give them sufficient extent for
  the upper leaves to develop out of the water; then its lower leaves
  only will be divided into hair-like joints, while the upper ones
  will be simple, rounded, and a little lobed.[169] This is not all:
  when the seeds of the same plant fall into some ditch where there is
  only water or moisture sufficient to make them germinate, the plant
  develops all its leaves in the air, and then none of them is divided
  into capillary points, which gives rise to _Ranunculus hederaceus_,
  which botanists regard as a species.

  "Another very striking proof of the effect of a change of
  circumstances on a plant submitted to it is the following:

  "It is observed that when a tuft of _Juncus bufonius_ grows very
  near the edge of the water in a ditch or marsh this rush then pushes
  out filiform stems which lie in the water, are there deformed,
  becoming disturbed (_traçantes_), proliferous, and very different
  from that of _Juncus bufonius_ which grows out of water. This plant,
  modified by the circumstances I have just indicated, has been
  regarded as a distinct species; it is the _Juncus supinus_ of
  Rotte.[170]

  "I could also give citations to prove that the changes of
  circumstances relative to organisms necessarily change the
  influences which they undergo on the part of all that which environs
  them or which acts on them, and so necessarily bring about changes
  in their size, their shape, their different organs.

  "Then among living beings nature seems to me to offer in an absolute
  manner only individuals which succeed one another by generation.

  "However, in order to facilitate the study and recognition of these
  organisms, I give the name of _species_ to every collection of
  individuals which during a long period resemble each other so much
  in all their parts that these individuals only present small
  accidental differences which, in plants, reproduction by seeds
  causes to disappear.

  "But, besides that at the end of a long period the totality of
  individuals of such a species change as the circumstances which act
  on them, those of these individuals which from special causes are
  transported into very different situations from those where the
  others occur, and then constantly submitted to other influences--the
  former, I say, assume new forms as the result of a long habit of
  this other mode of existence, and then they constitute a new
  _species_, which comprehends all the individuals which occur in the
  same condition of existence. We see, then, the faithful picture of
  that which happened in this respect in nature, and of that which the
  observation of its acts can alone discover to us."


III. _Lamarck's Views on Species, as published in 1803._

In the opening lecture[171] of his course at the Museum of Natural
History, delivered in prairial (May 20-June 18), 1803, we have a
further statement of the theoretical views of Lamarck on species and
their origin. He addresses his audience as "Citoyens," France still
being under the _régime_ of the Republic.

The brochure containing this address is exceedingly rare, the only copy
existing, as far as we know, being in the library of the Museum of
Natural History in Paris. The author's name is not even given, and there
is no imprint. Lamarck's name, however, is written on the outside of the
cover of the copy we have translated. At the end of the otherwise blank
page succeeding the last page (p. 46) is printed the words: _Esquisse
d'un Philosophie zoologique_, the preliminary sketch, however, never
having been added.

He begins by telling his hearers that they should not desire to burden
their memories with the infinite details and immense nomenclature of
the prodigious quantity of animals among which we distinguish an
illimitable number of species, "but what is more worthy of you, and of
more educational value, you should seek to know the course of nature."
"You may enter upon the study of classes, orders, genera, and even of
the most interesting species, because this would be useful to you; but
you should never forget that all these subdivisions, which could not,
however, be well spared, are artificial, and that nature does not
recognize any of them."

  "In the opening lecture of my last year's course I tried to convince
  you that it is only in the organization of animals that we find the
  foundation of the natural relations between the different groups,
  where they diverge and where they approach each other. Finally, I
  tried to show you that the enormous series of animals which nature
  has produced presents, from that of its extremities where are placed
  the most perfect animals, down to that which comprises the most
  imperfect, or the most simple, an evident modification, though
  irregularly defined (_nuancé_), in the structure of the
  organization.

  "To-day, after having recalled some of the essential considerations
  which form the base of this great truth; after having shown you the
  principal means by which nature is enabled to create (_opérer_) her
  innumerable productions and to vary them infinitely; finally, after
  having made you see that in the use she has made of her power of
  generating and multiplying living beings she has necessarily
  proceeded from the more simple to the more complex, gradually
  complicating the organization of these bodies, as also the
  composition of their substance, while also in that which she has
  done on non-living bodies she has occupied herself unremittingly in
  the destruction of all preëxistent combinations, I shall undertake
  to examine under your eyes the great question in natural
  history--What is a _species_ among organized beings?

  "When we consider the series of animals, beginning at the end
  comprising the most perfect and complicated, and passing down
  through all the degrees of this series to the other end, we see a
  very evident modification in structure and faculties. On the
  contrary, if we begin with the end which comprises animals the most
  simple in organization, the poorest in faculties and in organs--in a
  word, the most imperfect in all respects--we necessarily remark, as
  we gradually ascend in the series, a truly progressive complication
  in the organization of these different animals, and we see the
  organs and faculties of these beings successively multiplying and
  diversifying in a most remarkable manner.

  "These facts once known present truths which are, to some extent,
  eternal; for nothing here is the product of our imagination or of
  our arbitrary principles; that which I have just explained rests
  neither on systems nor on any hypothesis: it is only the very simple
  result of the observation of nature; hence I do not fear to advance
  the view that all that one can imagine, from any motives whatever,
  to contradict these great verities will always be destroyed by the
  evidence of the facts with which it deals.

  "To these facts it is necessary to add these very important
  considerations, which observation has led me to perceive, and the
  basis of which will always be recognized by those who pay attention
  to them; they are as follows:

  "Firstly, the exercise of life, and consequently of organic
  movement, constitutes its activity, tends, without ceasing, not only
  to develop and to extend the organization, but it tends besides to
  multiply the organs and to isolate them in special centres
  (_foyers_). To make sure whether the exercise of life tends to
  extend and develop the organization, it suffices to consider the
  state of the organs of any animal which has just been born, and to
  compare them in this condition with what they are when the animal
  has attained the period when its organs cease to receive any new
  development. Then we will see on what this organic law is based,
  which I have published in my _Recherches sur les Corps vivans_
  (p. 8), _i.e._, that--

  "'The special property of movement of fluids in the supple parts of
  the living body which contain them is to open (_frayer_) there
  routes, places of deposit and tissues; to create there canals, and
  consequently different organs; to cause these canals and these
  organs to vary there by reason of the diversity both of the
  movements as well as the nature of the fluids which occur there;
  finally to enlarge, to elongate, to divide and to gradually
  strengthen (_affermir_) these canals and their organs by the matters
  which are formed in the fluids in motion, which incessantly separate
  themselves, and a part of which is assimilated and united with
  organs while the rest is rejected.'

  "Secondly, the continual employment of an organ, especially if it is
  strongly exercised, strengthens this organ, develops it, increases
  its dimensions, enlarges and extends its faculties.

  "This second law of effects of exercise of life has been understood
  for a long time by those observers who have paid attention to the
  phenomena of organization.

  "Indeed, we know that all the time that an organ, or a system of
  organs, is rigorously exercised throughout a long time, not only its
  power, and the parts which form it, grow and strengthen themselves,
  but there are proofs that this organ, or system of organs, at that
  time attracts to itself the principal active forces of the life of
  the individual, because it becomes the cause which, under these
  conditions, makes the functions of other organs to be diminished in
  power.

  "Thus not only every organ or every part of the body, whether of man
  or of animals, being for a long period and more vigorously exercised
  than the others, has acquired a power and facility of action that
  the same organ could not have had before, and that it has never had
  in individuals which have exercised less, but also we consequently
  remark that the excessive employment of this organ diminishes the
  functions of the others and proportionately enfeebles them.

  "The man who habitually and vigorously exercises the organ of his
  intelligence develops and acquires a great facility of attention, of
  aptitude for thought, etc., but he has a feeble stomach and strongly
  limited muscular powers. He, on the contrary, who thinks little does
  not easily, and then only momentarily fixes his attention, while
  habitually giving much exercise to his muscular organs, has much
  vigor, possesses an excellent digestion, and is not given to the
  abstemiousness of the savant and man of letters.

  "Moreover, when one exercises long and vigorously an organ or system
  of organs, the active forces of life (in my opinion, the nervous
  fluid) have taken such a habit of acting (_porter_) towards this
  organ that they have formed in the individual an inclination to
  continue to exercise which it is difficult for it to overcome.

  "Hence it happens that the more we exercise an organ, the more we
  use it with facility, the more does it result that we perceive the
  need (_besoin_) of continuing to use it at the times when it is
  placed in action. So we remark that the habit of study, of
  application, of work, or of any other exercise of our organs or of
  any one of our organs, becomes with time an indispensable need to
  the individual, and often a passion which it does not know how to
  overcome.

  "Thirdly, finally, the effort made by necessity to obtain new
  faculties is aided by the concurrence of favorable circumstances;
  they create (_créent_) with time the new organs which are adapted
  (_propres_) to their faculties, and which as the result develop
  after long use (_qu'en suite un long emploi développe_).

  "How important is this consideration, and what light it spreads on
  the state of organization of the different animals now living!

  "Assuredly it will not be those who have long been in the habit of
  observing nature, and who have followed attentively that which
  happens to living individuals (to animals and to plants), who will
  deny that a great change in the circumstances of their situation and
  of their means of existence forces them and their race to adopt new
  habits; it will not be those, I say, who attempt to contest the
  foundation of the consideration which I have just exposed.

  "They can readily convince themselves of the solidity of that which
  I have already published in this respect.[172]

  "I have felt obliged to recall to you these great considerations, a
  sketch of which I traced for you last year, and which I have stated
  for the most part in my different works, because they serve, as you
  have seen, as a solution of the problem which interests so many
  naturalists, and which concerns the determination of _species_ among
  living bodies.

  "Indeed, if in ascending in the series of animals from the most
  simply organized animalcule, as from the monad, which seems to be
  only an animated point, up to the animals the most perfect, or whose
  structure is the most complicated--in a word, up to animals with
  mammæ--you observe in the different orders which comprise this great
  series a gradation, shaded (_nuancé_), although irregular, in the
  composition of the organization and in the increasing number of
  faculties, is it not evident that in the case where nature would
  exert some active power on the existence of these organized bodies
  she has been able to make them exist only by beginning with the most
  simple, and that she has been able to form directly among the
  animals only that which I call the rough sketches or germs
  (_ébauches_) of animality--that is to say, only these animalcules,
  almost invisible and to some extent without consistence, that we see
  develop spontaneously and in an astonishing abundance in certain
  places and under certain circumstances, while only in contrary
  circumstances are they totally destroyed?

  "Do we not therefore perceive that by the action of the laws of
  organization, which I have just now indicated, and by that of
  different means of multiplication which are due to them (_qui en
  dérivent_), nature has in favorable times, places, and climates
  multiplied her first germs (_ébauches_) of animality, given place to
  developments of their organizations, rendered gradually greater the
  duration of those which have originally descended from them, and
  increased and diversified their organs? Then always preserving the
  progress acquired by the reproductions of individuals and the
  succession of generations, and aided by much time and by a slow but
  constant diversity of circumstances, she has gradually brought about
  in this respect the state of things which we now observe.

  "How grand is this consideration, and especially how remote is it
  from all that is generally thought on this subject! Moreover, the
  astonishment which its novelty and its singularity may excite in you
  requires that at first you should suspend your judgment in regard to
  it. But the observation which establishes it is now on record
  (_consignée_), and the facts which support it exist and are
  incessantly renewed; however, as they open a vast field to your
  studies and to your own researches, it is to you yourselves that I
  appeal to pronounce on this great subject when you have sufficiently
  examined and followed all the facts which relate to it.

  "If among living bodies there are any the consideration of whose
  organization and of the phenomena which they produce can enlighten
  us as to the power of nature and its course relatively to the
  existence of these bodies, also as to the variations which they
  undergo, we certainly have to seek for them in the lowest classes of
  the two organic kingdoms (the animals and the plants). It is in the
  classes which comprise the living bodies whose organization is the
  least complex that we can observe and bring together facts the most
  luminous, observations the most decisive on the origin of these
  bodies, on their reproduction and their admirable diversification,
  finally on the formation and the development of their different
  organs, the whole process being aided by the concurrence of
  generations, of time, and of circumstances.

  "It is, indeed, among living bodies the most multiplied, the most
  numerous in nature, the most prompt and easy to regenerate
  themselves, that we should seek the most instructive facts bearing
  on the course of nature and on the means she has employed to create
  her innumerable productions. In this case we perceive that,
  relatively to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly give our
  attention to the invertebrate animals, because their enormous
  multiplicity in nature, the singular diversity of their systems of
  organization and of their means of multiplication, their increasing
  simplification, and the extreme fugacity of those which compose the
  lowest orders of these animals, show us much better than the others
  the true course of nature, and the means which she has used and
  which she is still incessantly employing to give existence to all
  the living bodies of which we have knowledge.

  "Her course and her means are without doubt the same for the
  production of the different plants which exist. And, indeed, though
  it is not believed, as some naturalists have wrongly held, but
  without proof, that plants are bodies more simple in organization
  than the most simple animals, it is a veritable error which
  observation plainly denies.

  "Truly, vegetable substance is less surcharged with constituent
  principles than any animal substance whatever, or at least most of
  them, but the substance of a living body and the organization of
  these bodies are two very different things. But there is in plants,
  as in animals, a true gradation in organization from the plant
  simplest in organization and parts up to plants the most complex in
  structure and with the most diversified organs.

  "If there is some approach, or at least some comparison to make
  between vegetables and animals, this can only be by opposing plants
  the most simply organized, like fungi and algæ, to the most
  imperfect animals like the polyps, and especially the amorphous
  polyps, which occur in the lowest order.

  "At present we clearly see that in order to bring about the
  existence of animals of all the classes, of all the orders, and of
  all the genera, nature has had to begin by giving existence to those
  which are the most simple in organization and lacking most in organs
  and faculties, the frailest in constituency, the most ephemeral, the
  quickest and easiest to multiply; and we shall find in the
  _amorphous_ or _microscopic polyps_ the most striking examples of
  this simplification of organization, and the indication that it is
  solely among them that occur the astonishing germs of animality.

  "At present we only know the principal law of the organization, the
  power of the exercise of the functions of life, the influence of the
  movement of fluids in the supple parts of organic bodies, and the
  power which the regenerations have of conserving the progress
  acquired in the composition of organs.

  "At present, finally, relying on numerous observations, seeing that
  with the aid of much time, of changes in local circumstances, in
  climates, and consequently in the habits of animals, the progression
  in the complication of their organization and in the diversity of
  their parts has gradually operated (_a dû s'opérer_) in a way that
  all the animals now known have been successively formed such as we
  now see them, it becomes possible to find the solution of the
  following question:

  "What is a _species_ among living beings?

  "All those who have much to do with the study of natural history
  know that naturalists at the present day are extremely embarrassed
  in defining what they mean by the word species.

  "In truth, observation for a long time has shown us, and shows us
  still in a great number of cases, collections of individuals which
  resemble each other so much in their organization and by the
  _ensemble_ of their parts that we do not hesitate to regard these
  collections of similar individuals as constituting so many species.

  "From this consideration we call _species_ every collection of
  individuals which are alike or almost so, and we remark that the
  regeneration of these individuals conserves the species and
  propagates it in continuing successively to reproduce similar
  individuals.

  "Formerly it was supposed that each species was immutable, as old as
  nature, and that she had caused its special creation by the Supreme
  Author of all which exists.

  "But we can impose on him laws in the execution of his will, and
  determine the mode which he has been pleased to follow in this
  respect, so it is only in this way that he permits us to recognize
  it by the aid of observation. Has not his infinite power created an
  order of things which successively gives existence to all that we
  see as well as to all that which exists and which we do not know?

  "Assuredly, whatever has been his will, the omnipotence of his power
  is always the same; and in whatever way this supreme will has been
  manifested, nothing can diminish its greatness. As regards, then,
  the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I confine myself to the limits
  of a simple observer of nature. Then, if I discover anything in the
  course that nature follows in her creations, I shall say, without
  fear of deceiving myself, that it has pleased its author that she
  possesses this power.

  "The idea that was held as to species among living bodies was quite
  simple, easy to grasp, and seemed confirmed by the constancy in the
  similar form of the individuals which reproduction or generation
  perpetuated. There still occur among us a very great number of these
  pretended species which we see every day.

  "However, the farther we advance in the knowledge of the different
  organized bodies with which almost every part of the surface of the
  globe is covered, the more does our embarrassment increase in
  determining what should be regarded as species, and the greater is
  the reason for limiting and distinguishing the genera.

  "As we gradually gather the productions of nature, as our
  collections gradually grow richer, we see almost all the gaps filled
  up, and our lines of demarcation effaced. We find ourselves
  compelled to make an arbitrary determination, which sometimes leads
  us to seize upon the slightest differences between varieties to form
  of them the character of that which we call species, and sometimes
  one person designates as a variety of such a species individuals a
  little different, which others regard as constituting a particular
  species.

  "I repeat, the richer our collections become, the more numerous are
  the proofs that all is more or less shaded (_nuancé_), that the
  remarkable differences become obliterated, and that the more often
  nature leaves it at our disposal to establish distinctions only
  minute, and in some degree trivial peculiarities.

  "But some genera among animals and plants are of such an extent,
  from the number of species they contain, that the study and the
  determination of these species are now almost impossible. The
  species of these genera, arranged in series and placed together
  according to their natural relations, present, with those allied to
  them, differences so slight that they shade into each other; and
  because these species are in some degree confounded with one another
  they leave almost no means of determining, by expression in words,
  the small differences which distinguish them.

  "There are also those who have been for a long time, and strongly,
  occupied with the determination of the species, and who have
  consulted rich collections, who can understand up to what point
  species, among living bodies, merge one into another (_fondent les
  unes dans les autres_), and who have been able to convince
  themselves, in the regions (_parties_) where we see isolated
  species, that this is only because there are wanting other species
  which are more nearly related, and which we have not yet collected.

  "I do not mean to say by this that the existing animals form a very
  simple series, one everywhere equally graduated; but I say that they
  form a branching series, irregularly graduated, and which has no
  discontinuity in its parts, or which at best has not always had, if
  it is true that it is to be found anywhere (_s'il est vrai qu'il
  s'en trouve quelque part_). It results from this that the species
  which terminates each branch of the general series holds a place at
  least on one side apart from the other allied species which
  intergrade with them. Behold this state of things, so well known,
  which I am now compelled to demonstrate.

  "I have no need (_besoin_) of any hypothesis or any supposition for
  this: I call to witness all observing naturalists.

  "Not only many genera, but entire orders, and some classes even,
  already present us with portions almost complete of the state of
  things which I have just indicated.

  "However, when in this case we have arranged the species in series,
  and they are all well placed according to their natural relations,
  if you select one of them, and it results in making a leap (_saut
  pardessus_) over to several others, you take another one of them a
  little less remote; these two species, placed in comparison, will
  then present the greatest differences from each other. It is thus
  that we had begun to regard most of the productions of nature which
  occur at our door. Then the generic and specific distinctions were
  very easy to establish. But now that our collections are very much
  richer, if you follow the series that I have cited above, from the
  species that you first chose up to that which you took in the second
  place, and which is very different from the first, you have passed
  from shade to shade without having remarked any differences worth
  noticing.

  "I ask what experienced zoölogist or botanist is there who has not
  thoroughly realized that which I have just explained to you?

  "Or how can one study, or how can one be able to determine in a
  thorough way the species, among the multitude of known polyps of all
  orders of radiates, worms, and especially of insects, where the
  simple genera of Papilio, Phalæna, Noctua, Tinea, Musca, Ichneumon,
  Curculio, Capricorn, Scarabæus, Cetonia, etc., etc., already contain
  so many closely allied species which shade into each other, are
  almost confounded one with another? What a host of molluscan shells
  exist in every country and in all seas which elude our means of
  distinction, and exhaust our resources in this respect! Ascend to
  the fishes, to the reptiles, to the birds, even to the mammals, and
  you will see, except the lacunæ which are still to be filled,
  everywhere shadings which take place between allied species, even
  the genera, and where after the most industrious study we fail to
  establish good distinctions. Does not botany, which considers the
  other series, comprising the plants, offer us, in its different
  parts, a state of things perfectly similar? In short, what
  difficulties do not arise in the study and in the determination of
  species in the genera Lichena, Fucus, Carex, Poa, Piper, Euphorbia,
  Erica, Hieracium, Solanum, Geranium, Mimosa, etc., etc.?

  "When these genera were established but a small number of species
  were known, and then it was easy to distinguish them; but at present
  almost all the gaps between them are filled, and our specific
  differences are necessarily minute and very often insufficient.

  "From this state of things well established we see what are the
  causes which have given rise to them; we see whether nature
  possesses the means for this, and if observation has been able to
  give us our explanation of it.

  "A great many facts teach us that gradually as the individuals of
  one of our species change their situation, climate, mode of life, or
  habits, they thus receive influences which gradually change the
  consistence and the proportions of their parts, their form, their
  faculties, even their organization; so that all of them participate
  eventually in the changes which they have undergone.

  "In the same climate, very different situations and exposures at
  first cause simple variations in the individuals which are found
  exposed there; but, as time goes on, the continual differences of
  situation of individuals of which I have spoken, which live and
  successively reproduce in the same circumstances, give rise among
  them to differences which are, in some degree, essential to their
  being, in such a way that at the end of many successive generations
  these individuals, which originally belonged to another species, are
  at the end transformed into a new species, distinct from the other.

  "For example, if the seeds of a grass, or of every other plant
  natural to a humid field, should be transplanted, by an accident, at
  first to the slope of a neighboring hill, where the soil, although
  more elevated, would yet be quite cool (_frais_) so as to allow the
  plant to live, and then after having lived there, and passed through
  many generations there, it should gradually reach the poor and
  almost arid soil of a mountain side--if the plant should thrive and
  live there and perpetuate itself during a series of generations, it
  would then be so changed that the botanists who should find it there
  would describe it as a separate species.

  "The same thing happens to animals which circumstances have forced
  to change their climate, manner of living, and habits; but for these
  the influences of the causes which I have just cited need still more
  time than in the case of plants to produce the notable changes in
  the individuals, though in the long run, however, they always
  succeed in bringing them about.

  "The idea of defining under the word _species_ a collection of
  similar individuals which perpetuate the same by generation, and
  which have existed thus as anciently as nature, implies the
  necessity that the individuals of one and the same species cannot
  mix, in their acts of generation, with the individuals of a
  different species. Unfortunately observation has proved, and still
  proves every day, that this consideration has no basis; for the
  hybrids, very common among plants, and the unions which are often
  observed between the individuals of very different species among
  animals, have made us perceive that the limits between these
  species, supposed to be constant, are not so rigid as is supposed.

  "In truth, nothing often results from these singular unions,
  especially when they are very incongruous, as the individuals which
  result from them are usually sterile; but also, when the disparities
  are less great, it is known that the drawbacks (_défauts_) with
  which it has to do no longer exist. However, this means alone
  suffices to gradually create the varieties which have afterwards
  arisen from races, and which, with time, constitute that which we
  call _species_.

  "To judge whether the idea which is formed of species has any real
  foundation, let us return to the considerations which I have already
  stated; they are, namely--

  "1. That all the organic bodies of our globe are veritable
  productions of nature, which she has created in succession at the
  end of much time.

  "2. That in her course nature has begun, and begins anew every day,
  by forming the simplest organic bodies, and that she directly forms
  only these--that is to say, only these first primitive germs
  (_ébauches_) of organization, which have been badly characterized by
  the expression of "spontaneous generations" (_qu'on a désignées
  mal-à-propos par l'expression de Générations spontanées_).

  "3. That the first germs (_ébauches_) of the animals and plants were
  formed in favorable places and circumstances. The functions of life
  beginning and an organic movement established, these have
  necessarily gradually developed the organs, so that after a time and
  under suitable circumstances they have been differentiated, as also
  the different parts (_elles les ont diversifiés ainsi qui les
  parties_).

  "4. That the power of increase in each portion of organic bodies
  being inherited at the first production (_effets_) of life, it has
  given rise to different modes of multiplication and of regeneration
  of individuals; and in that way the progress acquired in the
  composition of the organization and in the forms and the diversity
  of the parts has been preserved.

  "5. That with the aid of sufficient time, of circumstances which
  have been necessarily favorable, of changes that all parts of the
  surface of the globe have successively undergone in their
  condition--in a word, with the power that new situations and new
  habits have in modifying the organs of bodies endowed with life--all
  those which now exist have been imperceptibly formed such as we see
  them.

  "6. Finally, that according to a similar order of things, living
  beings, having undergone each of the more or less great changes in
  the condition of their organization and of their parts, that which
  is designated as a species among them has been insensibly and
  successively so formed, can have only a relative constancy in its
  condition, and cannot be as ancient as nature.

  "But, it will be said, when it is necessary to suppose that, with
  the aid of much time and of an infinite variation in circumstances,
  nature has gradually formed the different animals that we know,
  would we not be stopped in this supposition by the sole
  consideration of the admirable diversity which we observe in the
  instinct of different animals, and by that of the marvels of all
  sorts which their different kinds of industry present?

  "Will one dare to carry the spirit of system (_porter l'esprit de
  système_) to the point of saying that it is nature, and she alone,
  which creates this astonishing diversity of means, of ruses, of
  skill, of precautions, of patience, of which the industry of animals
  offers us so many examples! What we observe in this respect in the
  class of insects alone, is it not a thousand times more than is
  necessary to compel us to perceive that the limits of the power of
  nature by no means permit her herself to produce so many marvels,
  and to force the most obstinate philosophy to recognize that here
  the will of the supreme author of all things has been necessary, and
  has alone sufficed to cause the existence of so many admirable
  things?

  "Without doubt one would be rash, or rather wholly unreasonable, to
  pretend to assign limits to the power of the first author of all
  things; and by that alone no one can dare to say that this infinite
  power has not been able to will that which nature herself shows us
  she has willed.

  "This being so, if I discover that nature herself brings about or
  causes all the wonders just cited; that she creates the
  organization, the life, even feeling; that she multiplies and
  diversifies, within limits which are not known to us, the organs and
  faculties of organic bodies the existence of which she sustains or
  propagates; that she has created in animals by the single way of
  _need_, which establishes and directs the habits, the source of all
  actions, from the most simple up to those which constitute
  _instinct_, industry, finally reason, should I not recognize in this
  power of nature--that is to say, of existing things--the execution
  of the will of its sublime author, who has been able to will that it
  should have this power? Shall I any the less wonder at the
  omnipotence of the power of the first cause of all things, if it has
  pleased itself that things should be thus, than if by so many
  (separate) acts of his omnipotent will he should be occupied and
  occupy himself still continually with details of all the special
  creations, all the variations, and all the developments and
  perfections, all the destructions and all the renewals--in a word,
  with all the changes which are in general produced in things which
  exist?

  "But I intend to prove in my 'Biologie' that nature possesses in her
  _faculties_ all that is necessary to have to be able herself to
  produce that which we admire in her works; and regarding this
  subject I shall then enter into sufficient details which I am here
  obliged to omit.[173]

  "However, it is still objected that all we see stated regarding the
  state of living bodies are unalterable conditions in the
  preservation of their form, and it is thought that all the animals
  whom history has transmitted to us for two or three thousand years
  have always remained the same, and have lost nothing nor acquired
  anything in the perfecting of their organs and in the form of their
  parts.

  "While this apparent stability has for a long time been accepted as
  true, it has just been attempted to establish special proofs in a
  report on the collections of natural history brought from Egypt by
  the citizen Geoffroy."

Quotes three paragraphs in which the reporters (Cuvier and Geoffroy
St. Hilaire) say that the mummied animals of Thebes and Memphis are
perfectly similar to those of to-day. Then he goes on to say:

  "I have seen them, these animals, and I believe in the conformity of
  their resemblance with the individuals of the same species which
  live to-day. Thus the animals which the Egyptians worshipped and
  embalmed two or three thousand years ago are still in every respect
  similar to those which actually live in that country.

  "But it would be assuredly very singular that this should be
  otherwise; for the position of Egypt and its climate are still or
  very nearly the same as at former times. Therefore the animals which
  live there have not been compelled to change their habits.

  "There is, then, nothing in the observation which has just been
  reported which should be contrary to the considerations which I
  have expressed on this subject; and which especially proves that the
  animals of which it treats have existed during the whole period of
  nature. It only proves that they have existed for two or three
  thousand years; and every one who is accustomed to reflect, and at
  the same time to observe that which nature shows us of the monuments
  of its antiquity, readily appreciates the value of a duration of two
  or three thousand years in comparison with it.

  "Hence, as I have elsewhere said, it is sure that this appearance of
  the stability of things in nature will always be mistaken by the
  average of mankind for the reality; because in general people only
  judge of everything relatively to themselves.

  "For the man who observes, and who in this respect only judges from
  the changes which he himself perceives, the intervals of these
  changes are _stationary conditions_ (_états_) which should appear to
  be limitless, because of the brevity of life of the individuals of
  his species. Thus, as the records of his observations and the notes
  of facts which he has consigned to his registers only extend and
  mount up to several thousands of years (three to five thousand
  years), which is an infinitely small period of time relatively to
  those which have sufficed to bring about the great changes which the
  surface of the globe has undergone, everything seems _stable_ to him
  in the planet which he inhabits, and he is inclined to reject the
  monuments heaped up around him or buried in the earth which he
  treads under his feet, and which surrounds him on all sides.[174]

       *       *       *       *       *

  "It seems to me [as mistaken as] to expect some small creatures
  which only live a year, which inhabit some corner of a building,
  and which we may suppose are occupied with consulting among
  themselves as to the tradition, to pronounce on the duration of the
  edifice where they occur: and that going back in their paltry
  history to the twenty-fifth generation, they should unanimously
  decide that the building which serves to shelter them is eternal, or
  at least that it has always existed; because it has always appeared
  the same to them; and since they have never heard it said that it
  had a beginning. Great things (_grandeurs_) in extent and in
  duration are relative.[175]

  "When man wishes to clearly represent this truth he will be reserved
  in his decisions in regard to stability, which he attributes in
  nature to the state of things which he observes there.[176]

  "To admit the insensible change of species, and the modifications
  which individuals undergo as they are gradually forced to vary their
  habits or to contract new ones, we are not reduced to the unique
  consideration of too small spaces of time which our observations can
  embrace to permit us to perceive these changes; for, besides this
  induction, a quantity of facts collected for many years throws
  sufficient light on the question that I examine, so that does not
  remain undecided; and I can say now that our sciences of observation
  are too advanced not to have the solution sought for made evident.

  "Indeed, besides what we know of the influences and the results of
  heteroclite fecundations, we know positively to-day that a forced
  and long-sustained change, both in the habits and mode of life of
  animals, and in the situation, soil, and climate of plants, brings
  about, after a sufficient time has elapsed, a very remarkable change
  in the individuals which are exposed to them.

  "The animal which lives a free, wandering life on plains, where it
  habitually exercises itself in running swiftly; the birds whose
  needs (_besoins_) require them unceasingly to traverse great spaces
  in the air, finding themselves enclosed, some in the compartments of
  our menageries or in our stables, and others in our cages or in our
  poultry yards, are submitted there in time to striking influences,
  especially after a series of regenerations under the conditions
  which have made them contract new habits. The first loses in large
  part its nimbleness, its agility; its body becomes stouter, its
  limbs diminish in power and suppleness, and its faculties are no
  longer the same. The second become clumsy; they are unable to fly,
  and grow more fleshy in all parts of their bodies.

  "Behold in our stout and clumsy horses, habituated to draw heavy
  loads, and which constitute a special race by always being kept
  together--behold, I say, the difference in their form compared with
  those of English horses, which are all slender, with long necks,
  because for a long period they have been trained to run swiftly:
  behold in them the influence of a difference of habit, and judge for
  yourselves. You find them, then, such as they are in some degree in
  nature. You find there our cock and our hen in the condition we have
  [made] them, as also the mixed races that we have formed by mixed
  breeding between the varieties produced in different countries, or
  where they were so in the state of domesticity. You find there
  likewise our different races of domestic pigeons, our different
  dogs, etc. What are our cultivated fruits, our wheat, our cabbage,
  our lettuce, etc., etc., if they are not the result of changes which
  we ourselves have effected in these plants, in changing by our
  culture the conditions of their situation? Are they now found in
  this condition in nature? To these incontestable facts add the
  considerations which I have discussed in my _Recherches sur les
  Corps vivans_ (p. 56 _et suiv._), and decide for yourselves.

  "Thus, among living bodies, nature, as I have already said, offers
  only in an absolute way individuals which succeed each other
  genetically, and which descend one from the other. So the _species_
  among them are only relative, and only temporary.

  "Nevertheless, to facilitate the study and the knowledge of so many
  different bodies it is useful to give the name of _species_ to the
  entire collection of individuals which are alike, which reproduction
  perpetuates in the same condition as long as the conditions of their
  situation do not change enough to make their habits, their
  character, and their form vary.

  "Such is, citizens, the exact sketch of that which goes on in nature
  since she has existed, and of that which the observation of her acts
  has alone enabled us to discover. I have fulfilled my object if, in
  presenting to you the results of my researches and of my experience,
  I have been able to disclose to you that which in your studies of
  this kind deserves your special attention.

  "You now doubtless conceive how important are the considerations
  which I have just exposed to you, and how wrong you would be if, in
  devoting yourself to the study of animals or of plants, you should
  seek to see among them only the multiplied distinctions that we have
  been obliged to establish; in a word, if you should confine
  yourselves to fixing in your memory the variable and indefinite
  nomenclature which is applied to so many different bodies, instead
  of studying Nature herself--her course, her means, and the constant
  results that she knows how to attain."

On the next fly page are the following words: _Esquisse d'une
Philosophie zoologique_.


IV. _Lamarck's Views as published in 1806._[177]

  "Those who have observed much and have consulted the great
  collections, have been able to convince themselves that as gradually
  as the circumstances of their habitat, of exposure to their
  surroundings, of climate, food, mode of living, etc., have changed,
  the characters of size, form, of proportion between the parts, of
  color, of consistence, of duration, of agility, and of industry have
  proportionately changed.

  "They have been able to see, as regards the animals, that the more
  frequent and longer sustained use of any organ gradually strengthens
  this organ, develops it, enlarges it, and gives it a power
  proportional to the length of time it has been used; while the
  constant lack of use of such an organ insensibly weakens it, causes
  it to deteriorate, progressively diminishes its faculties, and tends
  to make it waste away.[178]

  "Finally, it has been remarked that all that nature has made
  individuals to acquire or lose by the sustained influence of
  circumstances where their race has existed for a long time, she has
  preserved by heredity in the new individuals which have originated
  from them (_elle le conserve par la génération aux nouveaux
  individus qui en proviennent_). These verities are firmly grounded,
  and can only be misunderstood by those who have never observed and
  followed nature in her operations.

  "Thus we are assured that that which is taken for _species_ among
  living bodies, and that all the specific differences which
  distinguish these natural productions, have no absolute _stability_,
  but that they enjoy only a relative _stability_; which it is very
  important to consider in order to fix the limits which we must
  establish in the determination of that which we must call _species_.

  "It is known that different places change in nature and character by
  reason of their position, their 'composition' [we should say
  geological structure or features], and their climate; that which is
  easily perceived in passing over different places distinguished by
  special characteristics; behold already a cause of variation for the
  natural productions which inhabit these different places. But that
  which is not sufficiently known, and even that which people refuse to
  believe, is that each place itself changes after a time, in exposure,
  in climate, in nature, and in character, although with a slowness so
  great in relation to our period of time that we attribute to it a
  perfect _stability_.

  "Now, in either case, these changed places proportionately change
  the circumstances relative to the living bodies which inhabit them,
  and these produce again other influences on those same bodies.

  "We see from this that if there are extremes in these changes there
  are also gradations (_nuances_), that is to say, steps which are
  intermediate, and which fill up the interval; consequently there are
  also gradations in the differences which distinguish that which we
  call _species_.

  "Indeed, as we constantly meet with such shades (or intermediate
  steps) between these so-called _species_, we find ourselves forced
  to descend to the minutest details to find any distinctions; the
  slightest peculiarities of form, of color, of size, and often even
  of differences only perceived in the aspect of the individual
  compared with other individuals which are related to it the more by
  their relations, are seized upon by naturalists to establish
  specific differences; so that, the slightest varieties being
  reckoned as species, our catalogues of species grow infinitely
  great, and the name of the productions of nature of the most
  interest to us are, so to speak, buried in these enormous lists,
  become very difficult to find, because now the objects are mostly
  only determined by characters which our senses can scarcely enable
  us to perceive.

  "Meanwhile we should remember that nothing of all this exists in
  nature; that she knows neither classes, orders, genera, nor species,
  in spite of all the foundation which the portion of the natural
  series which our collection contains has seemed to afford them; and
  that of organic or living bodies there are, in reality, only
  individuals, and among different races which gradually pass
  (_nuancent_) into all degrees of organization" (p. 14).

On p. 70 he speaks of the animal chain from monad to man, ascending from
the most simple to the most complex. The monad is the most simple, the
most like a germ of living bodies, and from its nature passes to the
volvoces, proteus, vibrios; from them nature arrives at the production
of "polypes rotifères"--and then at "Radiaires," worms, Arachnida,
Crustacea, and Cirrhipedes.


FOOTNOTES:

[162] _Discours d'ouverture du Cours de Zoologie donné dans le Muséum
national d'Histoire naturelle, le 21 floréal, an 8 de la République_
(1800). Floréal is the name adopted by the National Convention for the
eighth month of the year. In the years of the Republic 1 to 7 it
extended from April 20 to May 19 inclusive, and in the years 8 to 13
from April 21 to May 20 (_Century Cyclopedia of Names_). The lecture,
then, in which Lamarck first presented his views was delivered on some
day between April 21 and May 20, 1800.

[163] Lamarck by the word _génération_ implies heredity. He nowhere uses
the word _hérédité_.

[164] "L'oiseau que le besoin attire sur l'eau pour y trouver la proie
qui le fait vivre, écarte les doigts de ses pieds lorsqu'il veut frapper
l'eau et se mouvoir à sa surface" (p. 13). If the word _veut_ has
suggested the doctrine of appetency in meaning has been pushed too far
by the critics of Lamarck.

[165] This he already touched upon in his _Mémoires de Physique et
d'Histoire naturelle_ (p. 342).

[166] _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, pp. 16 and 17.

[167] I have cited the incontestable proofs in my _Hydrogéologie_, and I
have the conviction that one day all will be compelled to accept these
great truths.

[168] _Ranunculus aquaticus capillaceus_ (Tournef., p. 291).

[169] _Ranunculus aquaticus_ (folio rotundo et capillaceo, Tournef.,
p. 291).

[170] _Gramen junceum_, etc. (Moris, hist. 3, sec. 8, t. 9, f. 4).

[171] _Discours d'ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie, prononcé en
prairial, an XI, au Muséum d'Histoire naturelle, sur la question,
Qu'est-ce que l'espèce parmi les corps vivans?_ (1803).

[172] _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans_, p. 9.

[173] "See at the end of this discourse the sketch of a _Philosophie
zoologique_ relative to this subject." [This sketch was not added--only
the title at the end of the book.]

[174] See the _Annales du Muséum d'Hist. nat._, IV^e cahier. 1., 1802,
pp. 302, 303: _Mémoires sur les Fossiles des Environs de Paris_, etc. He
repeats in his _Discours_ what he wrote in 1802 in the _Annales_.

[175] _Ibid._ This is repeated from the article in the _Annales_.

[176] _Ibid._ "See my _Recherches sur les Corps vivans_" (Appendix,
p. 141).

[177] _Discours d'Ouverture du Cours des Animaux sans Vertèbres,
prononcé dans le Muséum d'Histoire naturelle en mai 1806._ (No imprint.
8^o, pp. 108.) Only the most important passages are here translated.

[178] "We know that all the forms of organs compared to the uses of
these same organs are always perfectly adapted. But there is a common
error in this connection, since it is thought that the forms of organs
have caused their functions (_en ont amené l'emploi_), whereas it is
easy to demonstrate by observation that it is the uses (_usages_) which
have given origin to the forms of organs."




CHAPTER XVII

THE "PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE"


Lamarck's mature views on the theory of descent comprise a portion of
his celebrated _Philosophie zoologique_. We will let him tell the story
of creation by natural causes so far as possible in his own words.

In the _avertissement_, or preface, he says that his experience has led
him to realize that a body of precepts and of principles relating to the
study of animals and even applicable to other parts of the natural
sciences would now be useful, our knowledge of zoölogical facts having,
for about thirty years, made considerable progress.

After referring to the differences in structure and faculties
characterizing animals of different groups, he proceeds to outline his
theory, and begins by asking:

  "How, indeed, can I consider the singular modification in the
  structure of animals, as we glance over the series from the most
  perfect to the least perfect, without asking how we can account for
  a fact so positive and so remarkable--a fact attested to me by so
  many proofs? Should I not think that nature has successively
  produced the different living beings by proceeding from the most
  simple to the most compound; because in ascending the animal scale
  from the most imperfect up to the most perfect, the organization
  perfects itself and becomes gradually complicated in a most
  remarkable way?"

This leads him to consider what is life, and he remarks (p. xv.) that it
does not exist without external stimuli. The conditions necessary for
the existence of life are found completely developed in the simplest
organization. We are then led to inquire how this organization, by
reason of certain changes, can give rise to other organisms less simple,
and finally originate creatures becoming gradually more complicated, as
we see in ascending the animal scale. Then employing the two following
considerations, he believes he perceives the solution of the problem
which has occupied his thoughts.

He then cites as factors (1) use and disuse; (2) the movement of
internal fluids by which passages are opened through the cellular tissue
in which they move, and finally create different organs. Hence the
_movement of fluids in the interior of animals_, and the _influence of
new circumstances_ as animals gradually expose themselves to them in
spreading into every inhabitable place, are the two general causes which
have produced the different animals in the condition we now see them.
Meanwhile he perceived the importance of the preservation by heredity,
though he nowhere uses that word, in the new individuals reproduced of
everything which the results of the life and influencing circumstances
had caused to be acquired in the organization of those which have
transmitted existence to them.

In the _Discours préliminaire_, referring to the _progression_ in
organization of animals from the simplest to man, as also to the
successive acquisition of different special organs, and consequently of
as many faculties as new organs obtained, he remarks:

  "Then we can perceive how needs (_besoins_), at the outset reduced
  to nullity, and of which the number gradually increases, have
  produced the inclination (_penchant_) to actions fitted to satisfy
  it; how the actions, becoming habitual and energetic, have caused
  the development of the organs which execute them; how the force
  which excites the organic movements may, in the simplest animals, be
  outside of them and yet animate them; how, then, this force has been
  transported and fixed in the animal itself; finally, how it then has
  become the source of sensibility, and in the end that of acts of
  intelligence.

  "I shall add that if this method had been followed, then _sensation_
  would not have been regarded as the general and immediate cause of
  organic movements, and it would not have been said that life is a
  series of movements which are executed in virtue of sensations
  received by different organs; or, in other words, that all the vital
  movements are the product of impressions received by the sensitive
  parts.[179]

  "This cause seems, up to a certain point, established as regards the
  most perfect animals; but had it been so relatively to all living
  beings, they should all be endowed with the power of sensation. But
  it cannot be proved that this is the case with plants, and it cannot
  likewise be proved that it is so with all the animals known.

  "But nature in creating her organisms has not begun by suddenly
  establishing a faculty so eminent as that of sensation: she has had
  the means of producing this faculty in the imperfect animals of the
  first classes of the animal kingdom," referring to the Protozoa. But
  she has accomplished this gradually and successively. "Nature has
  progressively created the different special organs, also the
  faculties which animals enjoy."

He remarks that though it is indispensable to classify living forms, yet
that our classifications are all artificial; that species, genera,
families, orders, and classes do not exist in nature--only the
individuals really exist. In the third chapter he gives the old
definition of species, that they are fixed and immutable, and then
speaks of the animal series, saying:

  "I do not mean by this to say that the existing animals form a very
  simple series, and especially evenly graduated; but I claim that
  they form a branched series,[180] irregularly graduated, and which
  has no discontinuity in its parts, or which, at least, has not
  always had, if it is true that, owing to the extinction of some
  species, there are some breaks. It follows that the _species_ which
  terminates each branch of the general series is connected at least
  on one side with other _species_ which intergrade with it" (p. 59).

He then points out the difficulty of determining what are species in
certain large genera, such as Papilio, Ichneumon, etc. How new species
arise is shown by observation.

  "A number of facts teaches us that in proportion as the individuals
  of one of our species are subjected to changes in situation,
  climate, mode of life or habits, they thereby receive influences
  which gradually change the consistence and the proportions of their
  parts, their form, their faculties, even their structure; so that it
  follows that all of them after a time participate in the changes to
  which they have been subjected.

  "In the same climate very different situations and exposures cause
  simple variations in the individuals occurring there; but, after the
  lapse of time, the continual differences of situation of the
  individuals of which I speak, which live and successively reproduce
  under the same circumstances, produce differences in them which
  become, in some degree, essential to their existence, so that at the
  end of many successive generations these individuals, which
  originally belonged to another species, became finally transformed
  into a new species distinct from the other.

  "For example, should the seeds of a grass or of any other plant
  natural to a moist field be carried by any means at first to the
  slope of a neighboring hill, where the soil, although more elevated,
  will yet be sufficiently moist to allow the plant to live there, and
  if it results, after having lived there and having passed through
  several generations, that it gradually reaches the dry and almost
  arid soil of a mountain side; if the plant succeeds in living there,
  and perpetuates itself there during a series of generations, it will
  then be so changed that any botanists who should find it there would
  make a distinct species of it.

  "The same thing happens in the case of animals which circumstances
  have forced to change in climate, mode of life, and habits; but in
  their case the influences of the causes which I have just cited need
  still more time than the plants to bring about notable changes in
  the individuals.

  "The idea of embracing, under the name of _species_, a collection of
  like individuals which are perpetuated by generation, and which have
  remained the same as long as nature has endured, implies the
  necessity that the individuals of one and the same species should
  not cross with individuals of a different species.

  "Unfortunately observation has proved, and still proves every day,
  that this consideration is unfounded; for hybrids, very common among
  plants, and the pairings which we often observe between the
  individuals of very different _species_ of animals, have led us to
  see that the limits between these supposed constant species are not
  so fixed as has been imagined.

  "In truth, nothing often results from these singular unions,
  especially if they are very ill-assorted, and then the individuals
  which do result from them are usually infertile; but also, when the
  disparities are less great, we know that the default in question
  does not occur.

  "But this cause only suffices to create, step by step, varieties
  which finally become races, and which, with time, constitute what we
  call _species_.

  "To decide whether the idea which is formed of the _species_ has any
  real foundation, let us return to the considerations which I have
  already explained; they lead us to see:

  "1. That all the organized bodies of our globe are true productions
  of Nature, which she has successively formed after the lapse of much
  time;

  "2. That, in her course. Nature has begun, and begins over again
  every day, to form the simplest organisms, and that she directly
  creates only those, namely, which are the first germs (_ébauches_)
  of organization, which are designated by the expression of
  _spontaneous generations_;

  "3. That the first germs of the animal and plant having been formed
  in appropriate places and circumstances, the faculties of a
  beginning life and of an organic movement established, have
  necessarily gradually developed the organs, and that with time they
  have diversified them, as also the parts;

  "4. That the power of growth in each part of the organized body
  being inherent in the first created forms of life, it has given rise
  to different modes of multiplication and of regeneration of
  individuals; and that consequently the progress acquired in the
  composition of the organization and in the shape and diversity of
  the parts has been preserved;

  "5. That with the aid of sufficient time, of circumstances which
  have been necessarily favorable, of changes of condition that every
  part of the earth's surface has successively undergone--in a word,
  by the power which new situations and new habits have of modifying
  the organs of living beings, all those which now exist have been
  gradually formed such as we now see them;

  "6. Finally, that, according to a similar order of things, living
  beings having undergone each of the more or less great changes in
  the condition of their structure and parts, that which we call a
  _species_ among them has been gradually and successively so formed,
  having only a relative constancy in its condition, and not being as
  old as Nature herself.

  "But, it will be said, when it is supposed that by the aid of much
  time and of an infinite variation in circumstances, Nature has
  gradually formed the different animals known to us, shall we not be
  stopped in this supposition by the simple consideration of the
  admirable diversity which we observe in the _instincts_ of different
  animals, and by that of the marvels of every kind presented by their
  different kinds of _industry_?

  "Shall we dare to extend the spirit of system so far as to say that
  it is Nature who has herself alone created this astonishing
  diversity of means, of contrivances, of skill, of precautions, of
  patience, of which the _industry_ of animals offers us so many
  examples? What we observe in this respect in the simple class of
  _insects_, is it not a thousand times more than sufficient to make
  us realize that the limit to the power of Nature in nowise permits
  her to herself produce so many marvels, but to force the most
  obstinate philosopher to recognize that here the will of the Supreme
  Author of all things has been necessary, and has alone sufficed to
  create so many admirable things?

  "Without doubt, one would be rash or, rather, wholly insensate, to
  pretend to assign limits to the power of the first Author of all
  things; but, aside from that, no one could dare to say that this
  infinite power could not will that which Nature even shows us it has
  willed"[181] (p. 67).

Referring to the alleged proof of the fixity of species brought forward
by Cuvier in the _Annales du Muséum d'Histoire naturelle_ (i., pp. 235
and 236) that the mummied birds, crocodiles, and other animals of Egypt
present no differences from those now living, Lamarck says:

  "It would assuredly be very singular if it were otherwise, because
  the position of Egypt and its climate are still almost exactly what
  they were at that epoch. Moreover, the birds which live there still
  exist under the same circumstances as they were then, not having
  been obliged to change their habits.

  "Moreover, who does not perceive that birds, which can so easily
  change their situation and seek places which suit them are less
  subject than many other animals to the variations of local
  circumstances, and hence less restricted in their habits."

He adds the fact that the animals in question have inhabited Egypt for
two or three thousand years, and not necessarily from all time, and that
this is not time enough for marked changes. He then gives the following
definition of species, which is the best ever offered: "Species, then,
have only a relative stability, and are invariable only temporarily."

  "Yet, to facilitate the study and knowledge of so many different
  organisms it is useful to give the name of _species_ to every
  similar collection of similar individuals which are perpetuated by
  heredity (_génération_) in the same condition, so long as the
  circumstances of their situation do not change enough to render
  variable their habits, character, and form."

He then discusses fossil species in the way already described in
Chapter III. (p. 75).

The subject of the checks upon over-population by the smaller and weaker
animals, or the struggle for existence, is thus discussed in
Chapter IV.:

  "Owing to the extreme multiplication of the small species, and
  especially of the most imperfect animals, the multiplicity of
  individuals might be prejudicial to the preservation of the species,
  to that of the progress acquired in the improvement of the
  organization--in a word, to the general order, if nature had not
  taken precautions to keep this multiplication within due limits over
  which she would never pass.

  "Animals devour one another, except those which live only on plants;
  but the latter are exposed to being devoured by the carnivorous
  animals.

  "We know that it is the strongest and the best armed which devour
  the weaker, and that the larger kinds devour the smaller.
  Nevertheless, the individuals of a single species rarely devour each
  other: they war upon other races.[182]

  "The multiplication of the small species of animals is so
  considerable, and the renewals of their generations are so prompt,
  that these small species would render the earth uninhabitable to the
  others if nature had not set a limit to their prodigious
  multiplication. But since they serve as prey for a multitude of
  other animals, as the length of their life is very limited, and as
  the lowering of the temperature kills them, their numbers are always
  maintained in proper proportions for the preservation of their races
  and that of others.

  "As to the larger and stronger animals, they would be too dominant
  and injure the preservation of other races if they should multiply
  in too great proportions. But their races devouring each other, they
  would only multiply slowly and in a small number at a time; this
  would maintain in this respect the kind of equilibrium which should
  exist.

  "Finally, only man, considered separately from all which is
  characteristic of him, seems capable of multiplying indefinitely,
  because his intelligence and his resources secure him from seeing
  his increase arrested by the voracity of any animals. He exercises
  over them such a supremacy that, instead of fearing the larger and
  stronger races of animals, he is thus rather capable of destroying
  them, and he continually checks their increase.

  "But nature has given him numerous passions, which, unfortunately,
  developing with his intelligence, thus place a great obstacle to
  the extreme multiplication of the individuals of his species.

  "Indeed, it seems as if man had taken it upon himself unceasingly to
  reduce the number of his fellow-creatures; for never, I do not
  hesitate to say, will the earth be covered with the population that
  it could maintain. Several of its habitable parts would always be
  alternately very sparsely populated, although the time for these
  alternate changes would be to us measureless.

  "Thus by these wise precautions everything is preserved in the
  established order; the changes and perpetual renewals which are
  observable in this order are maintained within limits over which
  they cannot pass; the races of living beings all subsist in spite of
  their variations; the progress acquired in the improvement of the
  organization is not lost; everything which appears to be disordered,
  overturned, anomalous, reënters unceasingly into the general order,
  and even coöperates with it; and especially and always the will of
  the sublime Author of nature and of all existing things is
  invariably executed" (pp. 98-101).

In the sixth chapter the author treats of the degradation and
simplification of the structure from one end to the other of the animal
series, proceeding, as he says, inversely to the general order of
nature, from the compound to the more simple. Why he thus works out this
idea of a general degradation is not very apparent, since it is out of
tune with his views, so often elsewhere expressed, of a progressive
evolution from the simple to the complex, and to his own classification
of the animal kingdom, beginning as it does with the simplest forms and
ending with man. Perhaps, however, he temporarily adopts the prevailing
method of beginning with the highest forms in order to bring out
clearly the successive steps in inferiority or degradation presented in
descending the animal scale.

We will glean some passages of this chapter which bear on his theory of
descent. Speaking of the different kinds of aquatic surroundings he
remarks:

  "In the first place it should be observed that in the waters
  themselves she [Nature] presents considerably diversified
  circumstances; the fresh waters, marine waters, calm or stagnant
  waters, running waters or streams, the waters of warm climates,
  those of cold regions, finally those which are shallow and those
  which are very deep, offer many special circumstances, each of which
  acts differently on the animals living in them. Now, in a degree
  equal to the make-up of the organization, the races of animals which
  are exposed to either of these circumstances have been submitted to
  special influences and have been diversified by them."

He then, after referring to the general degradation of the Batrachians,
touches upon the atrophy of legs which has taken place in the snakes:

  "If we should consider as a result of _degradation_ the loss of legs
  seen in the snakes, the _Ophidia_ should be regarded as constituting
  the lowest order of reptiles; but it would be an error to admit this
  consideration. Indeed, the serpents being animals which, in order to
  hide themselves, have adopted the habit of gliding directly along
  the ground, their body has lengthened very considerably and
  disproportionately to its thickness. Now, elongated legs proving
  disadvantageous to their necessity of gliding and hiding, very short
  legs, being only four in number, since they are vertebrate animals,
  would be incapable of moving their bodies. Thus the habits of these
  animals have been the cause of the disappearance of their legs, and
  yet the _batrachians_, which have them, offer a more degraded
  organization, and are nearer the fishes" (p. 155).

Referring on the next page to the fishes, he remarks:--

  "Without doubt their general form, their lack of a constriction
  between the head and the body to form a neck, and the different fins
  which support them in place of legs, are the results of the
  influence of the dense medium which they inhabit, and not that of
  the _dégradation_ of their organization. But this modification
  (_dégradation_) is not less real and very great, as we can convince
  ourselves by examining their internal organs; it is such as to
  compel us to assign to the fishes a rank lower than that of the
  reptiles."

He then states that the series from the lamprey and fishes to the
mammals is not a regularly gradated one, and accounts for this "because
the work of nature has been often changed, hindered, and diverted in
direction by the influences which singularly different, even contrasted,
circumstances have exercised on the animals which are there found
exposed in the course of a long series of their renewed generations."

Lamarck thus accounts for the production of the radial symmetry of the
medusæ and echinoderms, his _Radiaires_. At the present day this
symmetry is attributed perhaps more correctly to their more or less
fixed mode of life.

  "It is without doubt by the result of this means which nature
  employs, at first with a feeble energy with _polyps_, and then with
  greater developments in the _Radiata_, that the radial form has been
  acquired; because the subtile ambient fluids, penetrating by the
  alimentary canal, and being expansive, have been able, by an
  incessantly renewed repulsion from the centre towards every point of
  the circumference, to give rise to this radiated arrangement of
  parts.

  "It is by this cause that, in the Radiata, the intestinal canal,
  although still very imperfect, since more often it has only a single
  opening, is yet complicated with numerous radiating vasculiform,
  often ramified, appendages.

  "It is, doubtless, also by this cause that in the soft Radiates, as
  the medusæ, etc., we observe a constant isochronic movement,
  movement very probably resulting from the successive intermissions
  between the masses of subtile fluids which penetrate into the
  interior of these animals and those of the same fluids which escape
  from it, often being spread throughout all their parts.

  "We cannot say that the isochronic movements of the soft Radiates
  are the result of their respiration; for below the vertebrate
  animals nature does not offer, in that of any animal, these
  alternate and measured movements of inspiration and expiration.
  Whatever may be the respiration of Radiates, it is extremely slow,
  and is executed without perceptible movements" (p. 200).


_The Influence of Circumstances on the Actions and Habits of Animals._

It is in Chapter VII. that the views of Lamarck are more fully presented
than elsewhere, and we therefore translate all of it as literally as
possible, so as to preserve the exact sense of the author.

  "We do not here have to do with a line of argument, but with the
  examination of a positive fact, which is more general than is
  supposed, and which has not received the attention it deserves,
  doubtless because, very often, it is quite difficult to discover.
  This fact consists in the influence which circumstances exert on the
  different organisms subjected to them.

  "In truth, for a long time there has been noticed the influence of
  different states of our organization on our character, our
  propensities (_penchants_), our actions, and even our ideas; but it
  seems to me that no one has yet recognized that of our actions and
  of our habits on our organization itself. Now, as these actions and
  these habits entirely depend on the circumstances in which we
  habitually find ourselves, I shall try to show how great is the
  influence which these circumstances exercise on the general form, on
  the condition of the parts, and even on the organization of living
  bodies. It is therefore this very positive fact which is to be the
  subject of this chapter.

  "If we have not had numerous occasions to plainly recognize the
  effects of this influence on certain organisms which we have
  transported under entirely new and different circumstances, and if
  we had not seen these effects and the changes resulting from them
  produced, in a way, under our very eyes, the important fact in
  question would have always remained unknown.

  "The influence of circumstances is really continuously and
  everywhere active on living beings, but what renders it difficult
  for us to appreciate this influence is that its effects only become
  sensible or recognizable (especially in the animals) at the end of a
  long period.

  "Before stating and examining the proofs of this fact, which
  deserves our attention, and which is very important for a zoölogical
  philosophy, let us resume the thread of the considerations we had
  begun to discuss.

  "In the preceding paragraph we have seen that it is now an
  incontrovertible fact that, in considering the animal scale in a
  sense the inverse of that of nature, we find that there exists in
  the groups composing this scale a continuous but irregular
  modification (_dégradation_) in the organization of animals which
  they comprise, an increasing simplification in the organization of
  these organisms; finally, a proportionate diminution in the number
  of faculties of these beings.

  "This fact once recognized may throw the greatest light on the very
  order which nature has followed in the production of all the
  existing animals; but it does not show why the structure of animals
  in its increasing complexity from the more imperfect up to the most
  perfect offers only an irregular gradation, whose extent presents a
  number of anomalies or digressions which have no appearance of order
  in their diversity.

  "Now, in seeking for the reason of this singular irregularity in the
  increasing complexity of organization of animals, if we should
  consider the outcome of the influences that the infinitely
  diversified circumstances in all parts of the globe exercise on the
  general form, the parts, and the very organization of these animals,
  everything will be clearly explained.

  "It will, indeed, be evident that the condition in which we find all
  animals is, on one side, the result of the increasing complexity of
  the organization which tends to form a regular gradation, and, on
  the other, that it is that of the influences of a multitude of very
  different circumstances which continually tend to destroy the
  regularity in the gradations of the increasing complexity of the
  organization.

  "Here it becomes necessary for me to explain the meaning I attach to
  the expression _circumstances influencing the form and structure of
  animals_--namely, that in becoming very different they change, with
  time, both their form and organization by proportionate
  modifications.

  "Assuredly, if these expressions should be taken literally, I should
  be accused of an error; for whatever may be the circumstances, they
  do not directly cause any modification in the form and structure of
  animals.

  "But the great changes in the circumstances bring about in animals
  great changes in their needs, and such changes in their needs
  necessarily cause changes in their actions. Now, if the new needs
  become constant or very permanent, the animals then assume new
  _habits_, which are as durable as the needs which gave origin to
  them. We see that this is easily demonstrated and even does not need
  any explanation to make it clearer.

  "It is then evident that a great change in circumstances having
  become constant in a race of animals leads these animals into new
  habits.

  "Now, if new circumstances, having become permanent in a race of
  animals, have given to these animals new _habits_--that is to say,
  have led them to perform new actions which have become
  habitual--there will from this result the use of such a part by
  preference to that of another, and in certain cases the total lack
  of use of any part which has become useless.

  "Nothing of all this should be considered as a hypothesis or as a
  mere peculiar opinion; they are, on the contrary, truths which
  require, in order to be made evident, only attention to and the
  observation of facts.

  "We shall see presently by the citation of known facts which prove
  it, on one side that the new wants, having rendered such a part
  necessary, have really by the result of efforts given origin to this
  part, and that as the result of its sustained use it has gradually
  strengthened it, developed, and has ended in considerably increasing
  its size; on the other side we shall see that, in certain cases, the
  new circumstances and new wants having rendered such a part wholly
  useless, the total lack of use of this part has led to the result
  that it has gradually ceased to receive the development which the
  other parts of the animal obtain; that it gradually becomes
  emaciated and thin; and that finally, when this lack of use has been
  total during a long time, the part in question ends in disappearing.
  All this is a positive fact; I propose to give the most convincing
  proofs.

  "In the plants, where there are no movements, and, consequently, no
  habits properly so called, great changes in circumstances do not
  bring about less great differences in the development of their
  parts; so that these differences originate and develop certain of
  them, while they reduce and cause several others to disappear. But
  here everything operates by the changes occurring in the nutrition
  of the plant, in its absorptions and transpirations, in the amount
  of heat, light, air, and humidity which it habitually receives;
  finally, in the superiority that certain of the different vital
  movements may assume over others.

  "Between individuals of the same species, some of which are
  constantly well nourished, and in circumstances favorable to their
  entire development, while the others live under reversed
  circumstances, there is brought about a difference in the condition
  of these individuals which gradually becomes very remarkable. How
  many examples could I not cite regarding animals and plants, which
  would confirm the grounds for this view! Now, if the circumstances
  remain the same, rendering habitual and constant the condition of
  individuals badly fed, diseased, or languishing, their internal
  organization becomes finally modified, and reproduction between the
  individuals in question preserves the acquired modifications, and
  ends in giving rise to a race very distinct from that of the
  individuals which unceasingly meet with circumstances favorable to
  their development.

  "A very dry spring-time is the cause of the grass of a field growing
  very slowly, remaining scraggy and puny, flowering and fruiting
  without growing much.

  "A spring interspersed with warm days and rainy days makes the same
  grass grow rapidly, and the harvest of hay is then excellent.

  "But if any cause perpetuates the unfavorable circumstances
  surrounding these plants, they vary proportionally, at first in
  their appearance and general condition, and finally in several
  particulars of their characters.

  "For example, if some seed of any of the grasses referred to should
  be carried into an elevated place, on a dry and stony greensward
  much exposed to the winds, and should germinate there, the plant
  which should be able to live in this place would always be badly
  nourished, and the individuals reproduced there continuing to exist
  under these depressing circumstances, there would result a race
  truly different from that living in the field, though originating
  from it. The individuals of this new race would be small, scraggy,
  and some of their organs, having developed more than others, would
  then offer special proportions.

  "Those who have observed much, and who have consulted the great
  collections, have become convinced that in proportion as the
  circumstances of habitat, exposure, climate, food, mode of life,
  etc., come to change, the characters of size, form, proportion
  between the parts, color, consistence, agility, and industry in the
  animals change proportionally.

  "What nature accomplishes after a long time, we bring about every
  day by suddenly changing, in the case of a living plant, the
  circumstances under which it and all the individuals of its species
  exist.

  "All botanists know that the plants which they transplant from their
  birthplace into gardens for cultivation gradually undergo changes
  which at last render them unrecognizable. Many plants naturally
  very hairy then become glabrous, or almost so; many of those which
  were creeping and trailing, then become erect; others lose their
  spines or their prickles; others still, from the woody and perennial
  condition which their stem possesses in a warm climate, pass, in our
  climate, into an herbaceous condition, and among these several are
  nothing more than annual plants; finally, the dimensions of their
  parts themselves undergo very considerable changes. These effects of
  changes of circumstances are so well known that botanists prefer not
  to describe garden plants, at least only those which have been newly
  cultivated.

  "Is not cultivated wheat (_Triticum sativum_) only a plant brought
  by man into the condition in which we actually see it? Who can tell
  me in what country such a plant lives in a state of nature--that is
  to say, without being there the result of its culture in some
  neighboring region?

  "Where occur in nature our cabbage, lettuce, etc., in the condition
  in which we see them in our kitchen-gardens? Is it not the same as
  regards a number of animals which domestication has changed or
  considerably modified?

  "What very different races among our fowls and domestic pigeons,
  which we have obtained by raising them in different circumstances
  and in different countries, and how vainly do we now endeavor to
  rediscover them in nature!

  "Those which are the least changed, without doubt by a more recent
  process of domestication, and because they do not live in a climate
  which is foreign to them, do not the less possess, in the condition
  of some of their parts, great differences produced by the habits
  which we have made them contract. Thus our ducks and our domestic
  geese trace back their type to the wild ducks and geese; but ours
  have lost the power of rising into the high regions of the air, and
  of flying over extensive regions; finally, a decided change has
  been wrought in the state of their parts compared with that of
  animals of the race from which they have descended.

  "Who does not know that such a native bird, which we raise in a cage
  and which lives there five or six years in succession, and after
  that replaced in nature--namely, set free--is then unable to fly
  like its fellows which have always been free? The slight change of
  circumstance operating on this individual has only diminished its
  power of flight, and doubtless has not produced any change in the
  shape of its parts. But if a numerous series of generations of
  individuals of the same race should have been kept in captivity for
  a considerable time, there is no doubt but that even the form of the
  parts of these individuals would gradually undergo notable changes.
  For a much stronger reason, if, instead of a simple captivity
  constantly maintained over them, this circumstance had been at the
  same time accompanied by a change to a very different climate, and
  if these individuals by degrees had been habituated to other kinds
  of food, and to other kinds of movements to obtain it; certainly
  these circumstances, united and becoming constant, would insensibly
  form a new and special race.

  "Where do we find, in nature, this multitude of races of _dogs_,
  which, as the result of domesticity to which we have reduced these
  animals, have been brought into their present condition? Where do we
  find these bull-dogs, greyhounds, water spaniels, spaniels,
  pug-dogs, etc., etc., races which present among themselves much
  greater differences than those which we admit to be specific in wild
  animals of the same genus?

  "Without doubt, a primitive single race, very near the wolf, if it
  is not itself the true type, has been submitted by man, at some
  period, to the process of domestication. This race, which then
  offered no difference between its individuals, has been gradually
  dispersed by man into different countries, with different climates;
  and after a time these same individuals, having undergone the
  influences of their habitats, and of the different habits they were
  obliged to contract in each country, have undergone remarkable
  changes, and have formed different special races. Now, the man who,
  for commercial reasons or from interests of any other kind, travels
  a very great distance, having carried into a densely populated
  place, as for example a great capital, different races of dogs
  originated in some very distant country, then the increase of these
  races by heredity (_génération_) has given rise successively to all
  those we now know.

  "The following fact proves, as regards plants, how a change in any
  important circumstance leads to a change in the parts of their
  organisms.

  "So long as _Ranunculus aquatilis_ is submerged in the water, its
  leaves are all finely incised and the divisions hair-like; but when
  the stalks of this plant reach the surface of the water, the leaves
  which grow out in the air are wider, rounded, and simply lobed. If
  some feet from the same plant the roots succeed in pushing into a
  soil only damp, without being submerged, their stalks then are
  short, none of their leaves are divided into capillary divisions,
  which gives rise to _Ranunculus hederaceus_, which the botanists
  regard as a species whenever they meet with it.

  "There is no doubt that as regards animals important changes in the
  circumstances under which they are accustomed to live do not produce
  alteration in their organs; for here the changes are much slower in
  operating than in plants, and, consequently, are to us less marked,
  and their cause less recognizable.

  "As to the circumstances which have so much power in modifying the
  organs of living beings, the most influential are, doubtless, the
  diversity of the surroundings in which they live; but besides this
  there are many others which, in addition, have a considerable
  influence in the production of the effects in question.

  "It is known that different localities change in nature and quality
  owing to their position, their nature, and their climate, as is
  easily seen in passing over different places distinguished by
  special features; hence we see a cause of variation for the animals
  and plants which live in these different places. But what we do not
  sufficiently know, and even what we generally refuse to believe, is
  that each place itself changes with time in exposure, in climate, in
  nature, and quality, although with a slowness so great in relation
  to our own continuance that we attribute to it a perfect stability.

  "Now, in either case, these changed localities proportionally change
  the circumstances relative to the organisms which inhabit them, and
  the latter then give rise to other influences bearing on these same
  beings.

  "We perceive from this that, if there are extremes in these changes,
  there are also gradations--namely, degrees which are intermediate
  and which fill the interval. Consequently there are also gradations
  in the differences which distinguish what we call _species_.

  "It is then evident that the whole surface of the earth offers, in
  the nature and situation of the matters which occupy its different
  points, a diversity of circumstances which is throughout in relation
  with that of the forms and parts of animals, independent of the
  special diversity which necessarily results from the progress of the
  composition of organization in each animal.

  "In each locality where animals can live, the circumstances which
  establish there an order of things remain for a long time the same,
  and really change there only with a slowness so great that man
  cannot directly notice them. He is obliged to consult monuments to
  recognize that in each one of these places the order of things that
  he discovers there has not always been the same, and to perceive
  that it will change more.

  "The races of animals which live in each of these places should,
  then, retain their customary habits there also for a long time;
  hence to us seems an apparent constancy of races which we call
  _species_--constancy which has originated among us the idea that
  these races are as ancient as nature.

  "But in the different points of the earth's surface which can be
  inhabited, nature and the situation of the places and climates
  constitute there, for the animals as for the plants, _different
  circumstances_ of all sorts of degrees. The animals which inhabit
  these different places should then differ from each other, not only
  on account of the state of nature of the organization in each race,
  but, besides, by reason of the habits that the individuals of each
  race there are forced to have; so, in proportion as he traverses the
  larger parts of the earth's surface the observing naturalist sees
  circumstances changing in a manner somewhat noticeable; he
  constantly sees that the species change proportionately in their
  characters.

  "Now, the true order of things necessary to consider in all this
  consists in recognizing:

  "1. That every slight change maintained under the circumstances
  where occur each race of animals, brings about in them a real change
  in their wants.

  "2. That every change in the wants of animals necessitates in them
  other movements (_actions_) to satisfy the new needs, and
  consequently other habits.

  "3. That every new want necessitating new actions to satisfy it,
  demands of the animal which feels it both the more frequent use of
  such of its parts of which before it made less use, which develops
  and considerably enlarges them, and the use of new parts which
  necessity has caused to insensibly develop in it by the effects of
  its inner feelings; which I shall constantly prove by known facts.

  "Thus, to arrive at a knowledge of the true causes of so many
  different forms and so many different habits of which the known
  animals offer us examples, it is necessary to consider that
  circumstances infinitely diversified, but all slowly changing, into
  which the animals of each race are successively thrown, have caused,
  for each of them, new wants and necessarily changes in their habits.
  Moreover, this truth, which cannot be denied, being once recognized,
  it will be easy to see how the new needs have been able to be
  satisfied, and the new habits formed, if any attention be given to
  the two following laws of nature, which observation always confirms:


  "_First Law._

  "In every animal which has not exceeded the term of its development,
  the more frequent and sustained use of any organ gradually
  strengthens this organ, develops and enlarges it, and gives it a
  strength proportioned to the length of time of such use; while the
  constant lack of use of such an organ imperceptibly weakens it,
  causes it to become reduced, progressively diminishes its faculties,
  and ends in its disappearance.


  "_Second Law._

  "Everything which nature has caused individuals to acquire or lose
  by the influence of the circumstances to which their race may be for
  a long time exposed, and consequently by the influence of the
  predominant use of such an organ, or by that of the constant lack of
  use of such part, it preserves by heredity (_génération_) and passes
  on to the new individuals which descend from it, provided that the
  changes thus acquired are common to both sexes, or to those which
  have given origin to these new individuals.

  "These are the two fundamental truths which can be misunderstood
  only by those who have never observed or followed nature in its
  operations, or only by those who allow themselves to fall into the
  error which I have combated.

  "Naturalists having observed that the forms of the parts of animals
  compared with the uses of these parts are always in perfect accord,
  have thought that the forms and conditions of parts have caused the
  function; but this is a mistake, for it is easy to demonstrate by
  observation that it is, on the contrary, the needs and uses of
  organs which have developed these same parts, which have even given
  origin to them where they did not exist, and which consequently have
  given rise to the condition in which we observe them in each animal.

  "If this were not so, it would have been necessary for nature to
  have created for the parts of animals as many forms as the diversity
  of circumstances in which they have to live had required, and that
  these forms and also the circumstances had never varied.

  "This is certainly not the existing order of things, and if it were
  really such, we should not have the race-horses of England; we
  should not have our great draft horses, so clumsy and so different
  from the first named, for nature herself has not produced their
  like; we should not, for the same reason, have terrier dogs with bow
  legs, greyhounds so swift in running, water-spaniels, etc.; we
  should not have tailless fowls, fantail pigeons, etc.; finally, we
  could cultivate the wild plants as much as we pleased in the rich
  and fertile soil of our gardens without fearing to see them change
  by long culture.

  "For a long time we have felt the force of the saying which has
  passed into the well-known proverb--_habits form a second nature_.

  "Assuredly, if the habits and nature of each animal can never vary,
  the proverb is false, has no foundation, and does not apply to the
  instances which led to its being spoken.

  "If we should seriously consider all that I have just stated, it
  might be thought that I had good reason when in my work entitled
  _Recherches sur les Corps vivans_ (p. 50) I established the
  following proposition:

  "'It is not the organs--that is to say, the nature and form of the
  parts of the body of an animal--which have given rise to its habits
  and its special faculties; but it is, on the contrary, its habits,
  its manner of life, and the circumstances in which are placed the
  individuals from which it originates, which have, with time, brought
  about the form of its body, the number and condition of its organs,
  finally, the faculties which it enjoys.'

  "If we weigh this proposition, and if we recall all the observations
  which nature and the state of things continually lead us to do, then
  its importance and its solidity will become more evident.

  "Time and favorable circumstances are, as I have already said, the
  two principal means which nature employs to give existence to all
  her productions: we know that time for her has no limits, and that
  consequently it is ever at her disposal.

  "As to the circumstances of which she has need, and which she uses
  still daily to cause variations in all that she continues to
  produce, we can say that they are, in some degree, for her
  inexhaustible.

  "The principal circumstances arise from the influence of climate;
  from those of different temperatures of the atmosphere, and from all
  the environing media; from that of the diversity of different
  localities and their situation; from that of habits, the ordinary
  movements, the most frequent actions; finally, from that of means of
  preservation, of mode of living, of defence, of reproduction, etc.

  "Moreover, owing to these diverse influences, the faculties increase
  and become stronger by use, become differentiated by the new habits
  preserved for long ages, and insensibly the organization, the
  consistence--in a word, the nature and condition of parts, as also
  of the organs--participate in the results of all these influences,
  become preserved, and are propagated by generation.

  "These truths, which are only the results of the two natural laws
  above stated, are in every case completely confirmed by facts; they
  clearly indicate the course of nature in all the diversity of its
  products.

  "But instead of contenting ourselves with generalities which might
  be considered as hypothetical, let us directly examine the facts,
  and consider, in the animals, the result of the use or disuse of
  their organs on the organs themselves, according to the habits that
  each race has been compelled to contract.

  "I shall now attempt to prove that the constant lack of exercise of
  organs at first diminishes their faculties, gradually impoverishes
  them, and ends by making them disappear, or even causing them to be
  atrophied, if this lack of use is perpetuated for a very long time
  through successive generations of animals of the same race.

  "I shall next prove that, on the contrary, the habit of exercising
  an organ, in every animal which has not attained the limit of the
  diminution of its faculties, not only perfects and increases the
  faculties of this organ, but, besides, enables it to acquire
  developments and dimensions which insensibly change it; so that with
  time it renders it very different from the same organ in another
  animal which exercises it much less.

  "_The lack of use of an organ, become constant by the habits formed,
  gradually impoverishes this organ, and ends by causing it to
  disappear and even to destroy it._

  "As such a proposition can only be admitted on proof, and not by its
  simple announcement, let us prove it by the citation of the leading
  known facts on which it is based.

  "The vertebrate animals, whose plan of organization is in all nearly
  the same, although they offer much diversity in their parts, have
  jaws armed with _teeth_; moreover, those among them which
  circumstances have placed in the habit of swallowing their food
  without previous _mastication_ are exposed to the result that their
  teeth become undeveloped. These teeth, then, either remain concealed
  between the bony edges of the jaws, without appearing above, or even
  their gums are found to have been atrophied.

  "In the baleen whales, which have been supposed to be completely
  deprived of teeth, M. Geoffroy has found them concealed in the jaws
  of the _foetus_ of this animal. This professor has also found in
  the birds the groove where the teeth should be situated; but they
  are no longer to be seen there.

  "In the class even of mammals, which comprises the most perfect
  animals, and chiefly those in which the vertebrate plan of
  organization is most perfectly carried out, not only the baleen has
  no usable teeth, but the ant-eater (_Myrmecophaga_) is also in the
  same condition, whose habit of not masticating its food has been for
  a long time established and preserved in its race.

  "The presence of eyes in the head is a characteristic of a great
  number of different animals, and becomes an essential part of the
  plan of organization of vertebrates.

  "Nevertheless the mole, which owing to its habits makes very little
  use of vision, has only very small eyes, which are scarcely visible,
  since they exercise these organs to a very slight extent.

  "The _Aspalax_ of Olivier (_Voyage en Egypte et en Perse_, ii.
  pl. 28 f. 2), which lives under ground like the mole, and which
  probably exposes itself still less than that animal to the light of
  day, has totally lost the power of sight; also it possesses only
  vestiges of the organ of which it is the seat; and yet these
  vestiges are wholly concealed under the skin and other parts which
  cover them, and do not permit the least access to the light.

  "The _Proteus_, an aquatic reptile allied to the salamander in its
  structure, and which lives in the dark subterranean waters of deep
  caves, has, like the _Aspalax_, only vestiges of the organs of
  sight--vestiges which are covered and concealed in the same manner.

  "We turn to a decisive consideration relative to this question.

  "Light does not penetrate everywhere; consequently animals which
  habitually live in situations where it does not penetrate lack the
  occasion of exercising the organs of sight, if nature has provided
  them with them. Moreover, the animals which make part of the plan of
  organization in which _eyes_ are necessarily present, have
  originally had them. However, since we find them among those which
  are deprived of the use of this organ, and which have only vestiges
  concealed and covered over, it should be evident that the
  impoverishment and even the disappearance of these organs are the
  result of a constant lack of exercise.

  "What proves it is that the organ of _hearing_ is never in this
  condition, and that we always find it in the animals when the nature
  of their organization should require its existence; the reason is as
  follows.

  "The _cause of sound_, that which, moved by the shock or the
  vibrations of bodies, transmits to the organ of hearing the
  impression which it receives, penetrates everywhere, traverses all
  the media, and even the mass of the densest bodies: from this it
  results that every animal which makes a part of a plan of
  organization to which _hearing_ is essential, has always occasion to
  exercise this organ in whatever situation it lives. So, among the
  _vertebrate animals_ we see none deprived of their organs of
  hearing; but in the groups below them, when the same organs are once
  wanting, we do not again find them.

  "It is not so with the organ of sight, for we see this organ
  disappear, reappear, and again disappear, in proportion to the
  possibility or impossibility of the animal's exercising it.

  "In the _acephalous molluscs_, the great development of the mantle
  of these molluscs has rendered their eyes and even their head
  entirely useless. These organs, also forming a part of a plan of
  organization which should comprise them, have disappeared and
  atrophied from constant lack of use.

  "Finally, it is a part of the plan of organization of _reptiles_, as
  in other vertebrate animals, to have four legs appended to their
  skeleton. The serpents should consequently have four, though they do
  not form the lowest order of reptiles, and are not so near the
  fishes as the batrachians (the frogs, the salamanders, etc.).

  "However, the serpents having taken up the habit of gliding along
  the ground, and of concealing themselves in the grass, their body,
  owing to continually repeated efforts to elongate itself so as to
  pass through narrow spaces, has acquired a considerable length
  disproportionate to its size. Moreover, limbs would have been very
  useless to these animals, and consequently would not have been
  employed: because long legs would have interfered with their need of
  gliding, and very short legs, not being more than four in number,
  would have been incapable of moving their body. Hence the lack of
  use of these parts having been constant in the races of these
  animals, has caused the total disappearance of these same parts,
  although really included in the plan of organization of the animals
  of their class.

  "Many insects which by the natural character of their order, and
  even of their genus, should have wings, lack them more or less
  completely from disuse. A quantity of Coleoptera, Orthoptera,
  Hymenoptera, and of Hemiptera, etc., afford examples; the habits of
  these animals do not require them to make use of their wings.

  "But it is not sufficient to give the explanation of the cause which
  has brought about the condition of the organs of different
  animals--a condition which we see to be always the same in those of
  the same species; we must besides observe the changes of condition
  produced in the organs of one and the same individual during its
  life, by the single result of a great change in the special habits
  in the individuals of its species. The following fact, which is one
  of the most remarkable, will serve to prove the influence of habits
  on the condition of organs, and show how changes wrought in the
  habits of an individual, produce the condition of the organs which
  are brought into action during the exercise of these habits.

  "M. Tenon, member of the Institute, has given an account to the
  Class of Sciences, that having examined the intestinal canal of
  several men who had been hard drinkers all their lives, he had
  constantly found it to be shortened to an extraordinary extent,
  compared with the same organ in those not given to such a habit.

  "We know that hard drinkers, or those who are addicted to
  drunkenness, take very little solid food, that they eat very
  lightly, and that the beverage which they take in excess frequently
  suffices to nourish them.

  "Moreover, as fluid aliments, especially spirituous liquors, do not
  remain a long time either in the stomach or in the intestines, the
  stomach and the remainder of the intestinal canal lose the habit of
  being distended in intemperate persons, so also in sedentary persons
  and those engaged in mental labor, who are habituated to take but
  little food. Gradually and at length their stomach becomes
  contracted, and their intestines shortened.

  "We are not concerned here with the shrinkage and shortening
  produced by a puckering of the parts, which permit ordinary
  extension, if instead of a continued emptiness these viscera should
  be filled; the shrinkage and shortening in question are real,
  considerable, and such that these organs would burst open rather
  than yield suddenly to the causes which would require ordinary
  extension.

  "In circumstances of persons of the same age, compare a man who, in
  order to devote himself to habitual study and mental work, which
  have rendered his digestion more difficult, has contracted the habit
  of eating lightly, with another who habitually takes a good deal of
  exercise, walks out often, and eats heartily; the stomach of the
  first will be weakened, and a small quantity of food will fill it,
  while that of the second will be not only maintained in its ordinary
  health but even strengthened.

  "We have here the case of an organ much modified in its dimensions
  and in its faculties by the single cause of a change in habits
  during the life of the individual.

  "_The frequent use of an organ become constant by habit increases
  the faculties of this organ, even develops it, and enables it to
  acquire dimensions and a power of action which it does not possess
  in animals which exercise less._

  "We have just said that the lack of employment of an organ which
  necessarily exists modifies it, impoverishes it, and ends by its
  disappearing entirely.

  "I shall now demonstrate that the continued employment of an organ,
  with the efforts made to draw out its powers under circumstances
  where it would be of service, strengthens, extends, and enlarges
  this organ, or creates a new one which can exercise the necessary
  functions.

  "The bird which necessity drives to the water to find there prey
  fitted for its sustenance, opens the digits of its feet when it
  wishes to strike the water and propel itself along its surface. The
  skin which unites these digits at their base, by these acts of
  spreading apart being unceasingly repeated contracts the habit of
  extending; so that after a while the broad membranes which connect
  the digits of ducks, geese, etc., are formed as we see them. The
  same efforts made in swimming--_i.e._, in pushing back the water, in
  order to advance and to move in this liquid--have likewise extended
  the membrane situated between the digits of the frogs, the
  sea-turtles, the otter, beaver, etc.

  "On the contrary, the bird whose mode of life habituates it to perch
  on trees, and which is born of individuals who have all contracted
  this habit, has necessarily the digits of the feet longer and shaped
  in another way than those of the aquatic animals which I have just
  mentioned. Its claws, after a while, became elongated, pointed, and
  curved or hook-like in order to grasp the branches on which the
  animal often rests.

  "Likewise we see that the shore bird, which is not inclined to swim,
  and which moreover has need of approaching the edge of the water to
  find there its prey, is in continual danger of sinking in the mud.
  Now, this bird, wishing to act so that its body shall not fall into
  the water, makes every effort to extend and elongate its legs. It
  results from this that the long-continued habit that this bird and
  the others of its race contract, of extending and continually
  elongating their legs, is the _cause_ of the individuals of this
  race being raised as if on stilts, having gradually acquired long,
  naked legs, which are denuded of feathers up to the thighs and often
  above them (_Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, p. 16).

  "We also perceive that the same bird, wishing to catch fish without
  wetting its body, is obliged to make continual efforts to lengthen
  its neck. Now, the results of these habitual efforts in this
  individual and in those of its race have enabled them, after a
  time, to singularly elongate them--as, indeed, is proved by the long
  neck of all shore birds.

  "If any swimming birds, such as the swan and the goose, whose legs
  are short, nevertheless have a very long neck, it is because these
  birds in swimming on the surface of the water have the habit of
  plunging their head down as far as they can, to catch aquatic larvæ
  and different animalcules for food, and because they make no effort
  to lengthen their legs.

  "When an animal to satisfy its wants makes repeated efforts to
  elongate its tongue, it will acquire a considerable length (the
  ant-eater, green wood-pecker); when it is obliged to seize anything
  with this same organ, then its tongue will divide and become forked.
  That of the humming-birds, which seize with their tongue, and that
  of the lizard and serpents, which use it to feel and examine objects
  in front of them, are proofs of what I advocate.

  "Wants, always occasioned by circumstances, and followed by
  sustained efforts to satisfy them, are not limited in results, in
  modifying--that is to say, in increasing or diminishing--the extent
  and the faculties of organs; but they also come to displace these
  same organs when certain of these wants become a necessity.

  "The fishes which habitually swim in large bodies of water, having
  need of seeing laterally, have, in fact, their eyes placed on the
  sides of the head. Their bodies, more or less flattened according to
  the _species_, have their sides perpendicular to the plane of the
  water, and their eyes are placed in such a way that there is an eye
  on each flattened side. But those fishes whose habits place them
  under the necessity of constantly approaching the shores, and
  especially the shelving banks or where the slope is slight, have
  been forced to swim on their flattened faces, so as to be able to
  approach nearer the edge of the water. In this situation, receiving
  more light from above than from beneath, and having a special need
  of being always attentive to what is going on above them, this need
  has forced one of their eyes to undergo a kind of displacement, and
  to assume the very singular situation which is familiar to us in the
  _soles_, _turbots_, _dabs_, etc. (_Pleuronectes_ and _Achirus_). The
  situation of these eyes is asymmetrical, because this results from
  an incomplete change. Now, this change is entirely completed in the
  rays, where the transverse flattening of the body is entirely
  horizontal, as also the head. Also the eyes of the rays, both
  situated on the upper side, have become symmetrical.

  "The serpents which glide along the surface of the ground are
  obliged chiefly to see elevated objects, or what are above their
  eyes. This necessity has brought an influence to bear on the
  situation of the organs of vision in these animals; and, in fact,
  they have the eyes placed in the lateral and upper parts of the
  head, so as to easily perceive what is above or at their sides; but
  they only see for a short distance what is in front of them.
  Moreover, forced to supply the lack of ability to see and recognize
  what is in front of their head, and which might injure them, they
  need only to feel such objects with the aid of their tongue, which
  they are obliged to dart out with all their power. This habit has
  not only contributed to render the tongue slender, very long and
  retractile, but has also led in a great number of species to its
  division, so as to enable them to feel several objects at once; it
  has likewise allowed them to form an opening at the end of their
  head, to enable the tongue to dart out without their being obliged
  to open their jaws.

  "Nothing is more remarkable than the result of habits in the
  herbivorous mammals.

  "The quadruped to whom circumstances and the wants which they have
  created have given for a long period, as also to others of its race,
  the habit of browsing on grass, only walks on the ground, and is
  obliged to rest there on its four feet the greater part of its life,
  moving about very little, or only to a moderate extent. The
  considerable time which this sort of creature is obliged to spend
  each day to fill itself with the only kind of food which it
  requires, leads it to move about very little, so that it uses its
  legs only to stand on the ground, to walk, or run, and they never
  serve to seize hold of or to climb trees.

  "From this habit of daily consuming great amounts of food which
  distend the organs which receive it, and of only moving about to a
  limited extent, it has resulted that the bodies of these animals are
  thick, clumsy, and massive, and have acquired a very great volume,
  as we see in elephants, rhinoceroses, oxen, buffaloes, horses, etc.

  "The habit of standing upright on their four feet during the greater
  part of the day to browse has given origin to a thick hoof which
  envelops the extremity of the digits of their feet; and as their
  toes are not trained to make any movement, and because they have
  served no other use than as supports, as also the rest of the leg,
  the most of them are short, are reduced in size, and even have ended
  by totally disappearing. Thus in the _pachyderms_, some have five
  toes enveloped in horn, and consequently their foot is divided into
  five parts; others have only four, and still others only three. But
  in the _ruminants_, which seem to be the most ancient of mammals,
  which are limited only to standing on the ground, there are only two
  digits on each foot, and only a single one is to be found in the
  _solipedes_ (the horse, the ass).

  "Moreover, among these herbivorous animals, and especially among the
  ruminants, it has been found that from the circumstances of the
  desert countries they inhabit they are incessantly exposed to be
  the prey of carnivorous animals, and find safety only in precipitous
  flight. Necessity has forced them to run swiftly; and from the habit
  they have thus acquired their body has become slenderer and their
  limbs much more delicate: we see examples in the antelopes, the
  gazelles, etc.

  "Other dangers in our climate to which are continually exposed the
  deer, the roebuck, the fallow-deer, of perishing from the chase made
  by man, have reduced them to the same necessity, restrained them to
  similar habits, and have given rise to the same results.

  "The ruminating animals only using their legs as supports, and not
  having strong jaws, which are only exercised in cutting and browsing
  on grass, can only fight by striking with the head, by directing
  against each other the _vertex_ of this part.

  "In their moments of anger, which are frequent, especially among the
  males, their internal feelings, by their efforts, more strongly urge
  the fluids toward this part of their head, and it there secretes the
  corneous matter in some, and osseous matter mixed with corneous
  matter in others, which gives origin to solid protuberances; hence
  the origin of horns and antlers, with which most of these animals
  have the head armed.

  "As regards habits, it is curious to observe the results in the
  special form and height of the giraffe (_camelopardalis_); we know
  that this animal, the tallest of mammals, inhabits the interior of
  Africa, and that it lives in localities where the earth, almost
  always arid and destitute of herbage, obliges it to browse on the
  foliage of trees, and to make continual efforts to reach it. It has
  resulted from this habit, maintained for a long period in all the
  individuals of its race, that its forelegs have become longer than
  the hinder ones, and that its neck is so elongated that the
  giraffe, without standing on its hind legs, raises its head and
  reaches six meters in height (almost twenty feet).

  "Among the birds, the ostriches, deprived of the power of flight,
  and raised on very long legs, probably owe their singular
  conformation to analogous circumstances.

  "The result of habits is as remarkable in the carnivorous mammals as
  it is in the herbivorous, but it presents effects of another kind.

  "Indeed, those of these mammals which are habituated, as their race,
  both to climb as well as to scratch or dig in the ground, or to tear
  open and kill other animals for food, have been obliged to use the
  digits of their feet; moreover, this habit has favored the
  separation of their digits, and has formed the claws with which they
  are armed.

  "But among the carnivores there are some which are obliged to run in
  order to overtake their prey; moreover, since these need and
  consequently have the habit of daily tearing with their claws and
  burying them deeply in the body of another animal, to seize and then
  to tear the flesh, and have been enabled by their repeated efforts
  to procure for these claws a size and curvature which would greatly
  interfere in walking or running on stony soil, it has resulted in
  this case that the animal has been obliged to make other efforts to
  draw back these too salient and curved claws which would impede it,
  and hence there has resulted the gradual formation of those special
  sheaths in which the cats, tigers, lions, etc., withdraw their claws
  when not in action.

  "Thus the efforts in any direction whatever, maintained for a long
  time or made habitually by certain parts of a living body to satisfy
  necessities called out by nature or by circumstances, develop these
  parts and make them acquire dimensions and a shape which they never
  would have attained if these efforts had not become the habitual
  action of the animals which have exercised them. The observations
  made on all the animals known will everywhere furnish examples.

  "Can any of them be more striking than that which the _kangaroo_
  offers us? This animal, which carries its young in its abdominal
  pouch, has adopted the habit of holding itself erect, standing only
  on its hind feet and tail, and only changing its position by a
  series of leaps, in which it preserves its erect attitude so as not
  to injure its young.

  "Let us see the result:

  "1. Its fore legs, of which it makes little use, and on which it
  rests only during the instant when it leaves its erect attitude,
  have never reached a development proportionate to that of the other
  parts, and have remained thin, very small, and weak;

  "2. The hind legs, almost continually in action, both for supporting
  the body and for leaping, have, on the contrary, obtained a
  considerable development, and have become very large and strong;

  "3. Finally, the tail, which we see is of much use in supporting the
  animal and in the performance of its principal movements, has
  acquired at its base a thickness and a strength extremely
  remarkable.

  "These well-known facts are assuredly well calculated to prove what
  results from the habitual use in the animals of any organ or part;
  and if, when there is observed in an animal an organ especially well
  developed, strong, and powerful, it is supposed that its habitual
  use has not produced it, that its continual disuse will make it lose
  nothing, and, finally, that this organ has always been such since
  the creation of the species to which this animal belongs, I will ask
  why our domestic ducks cannot fly like wild ducks--in a word, I
  might cite a multitude of examples which prove the differences in us
  resulting from the exercise or lack of use of such of our organs,
  although these differences might not be maintained in the
  individuals which follow them genetically, for then their products
  would be still more considerable.

  "I shall prove, in the second part, that when the will urges an
  animal to any action, the organs which should execute this action
  are immediately provoked by the affluence of subtile fluids (the
  nervous fluid), which then become the determining cause which calls
  for the action in question. A multitude of observations prove this
  fact, which is now indisputable.

  "It results that the multiplied repetitions of these acts of
  organization strengthen, extend, develop, and even create the organs
  which are necessary. It is only necessary attentively to observe
  that which is everywhere occurring to convince ourselves of the
  well-grounded basis of this cause of organic developments and
  changes.

  "Moreover, every change acquired in an organ by a habit of use
  sufficient to have produced it is then preserved by heredity
  (_génération_) if it is common to the individuals which, in
  fecundation, unite in the reproduction of their species. Finally,
  this change is propagated, and thus is transmitted to all the
  individuals which succeed and which are submitted to the same
  circumstances, unless they have been obliged to acquire it by the
  means which have in reality created it.

  "Besides, in reproductive unions the crossings between the
  individuals which have different qualities or forms are necessarily
  opposed to the continuous propagation of these qualities and these
  forms. We see that in man, who is exposed to so many diverse
  circumstances which exert an influence on him, the qualities or the
  accidental defects which he has been in the way of acquiring, are
  thus prevented from being preserved and propagated by generation.
  If, when some particular features of form or any defects are
  acquired, two individuals under this condition should always pair,
  they would reproduce the same features, and the successive
  generations being confined to such unions, a special and distinct
  race would then be formed. But perpetual unions between individuals
  which do not have the same peculiarities of form would cause all the
  characteristics acquired by special circumstances to disappear.

  "From this we can feel sure that if distances of habitation did not
  separate men the intermixture by generation would cause the general
  characteristics which distinguish the different nations to
  disappear.

  "If I should choose to pass in review all the classes, all the
  orders, all the genera, and all the species of animals which exist,
  I should show that the structure of individuals and their parts,
  their organs, their faculties, etc., etc., are in all cases the sole
  result of the circumstances in which each species is found to be
  subjected by nature and by the habits which the individuals which
  compose it have been obliged to contract, and which are only the
  product of a power primitively existing, which has forced the
  animals into their well-known habits.

  "We know that the animal called the _ai_, or the sloth (_Bradypus
  tridactylus_), is throughout life in a condition so very feeble that
  it is very slow and limited in its movements, and that it walks on
  the ground with much difficulty. Its movements are so slow that it
  is thought that it cannot walk more than fifty steps in a day. It is
  also known that the structure of this animal is in direct relation
  with its feeble state or its inaptitude for walking; and that should
  it desire to make any other movements than those which it is seen to
  make, it could not do it.

  "Therefore, supposing that this animal had received from nature its
  well-known organization, it is said that this organization has
  forced it to adopt the habits and the miserable condition it is in.

  "I am far from thinking so; because I am convinced that the habits
  which the individuals of the race of the _ai_ were originally
  compelled to contract have necessarily brought their organization
  into its actual state.

  "Since continual exposure to dangers has at some time compelled the
  individuals of this species to take refuge in trees and to live in
  them permanently, and then feed on their leaves, it is evident that
  then they would give up making a multitude of movements that animals
  which live on the ground perform.

  "All the needs of the _ai_ would then be reduced to seizing hold of
  the branches, to creeping along them or to drawing them in so as to
  reach the leaves, and then to remain on the tree in a kind of
  inaction, so as to prevent falling. Besides, this kind of
  sluggishness would be steadily provoked by the heat of the climate;
  for in warm-blooded animals the heat urges them rather to repose
  than to activity.

  "Moreover, during a long period of time the individuals of the race
  of the _ai_ having preserved the habit of clinging to trees and of
  making only slow and slightly varied movements, just sufficient for
  their needs, their organization has gradually become adapted to
  their new habits, and from this it will result:

  "1. That the arms of these animals making continual efforts readily
  to embrace the branches of trees, would become elongated;

  "2. That the nails of their digits would acquire much length and a
  hooked shape, by the continued efforts of the animal to retain its
  hold;

  "3. That their digits never having been trained to make special
  movements, would lose all mobility among themselves, would become
  united, and would only preserve the power of bending or of
  straightening out all together;

  "4. That their thighs, continually embracing both the trunks and the
  larger branches of trees, would contract a condition of habitual
  separation which would tend to widen the pelvis and to cause the
  cotyloid cavities to be directed backward;

  "5. Finally, that a great number of their bones would become fused,
  and hence several parts of their skeleton would assume an
  arrangement and a figure conformed to the habits of these animals,
  and contrary to what would be necessary for them to have for other
  habits.

  "Indeed, this can never be denied, because, in fact, nature on a
  thousand other occasions shows us, in the power exercised by
  circumstances on habits, and in that of the influence of habits on
  forms, dispositions, and the proportion of the parts of animals,
  truly analogous facts.

  "A great number of citations being unnecessary, we now see to what
  the case under discussion is reduced.

  "The fact is that divers animals have each, according to their genus
  and their species, special habits, and in all cases an organization
  which is perfectly adapted to these habits.

  "From the consideration of this fact, it appears that we should be
  free to admit either one or the other of the following conclusions,
  and that only one of them is susceptible of proof.

  "_Conclusion admitted up to this day_: Nature (or its Author), in
  creating the animals, has foreseen all the possible kinds of
  circumstances in which they should live, and has given to each
  species an unchanging organization, as also a form determinate and
  invariable in its different parts, which compels each species to
  live in the places and in the climate where we find it, and has
  there preserved its known habits.

  "_My own conclusion_: Nature, in producing in succession every
  species of animal, and beginning with the least perfect or the
  simplest to end her work with the most perfect, has gradually
  complicated their structure; and these animals spreading generally
  throughout all the inhabitable regions of the globe, each species
  has received, through the influence of circumstances to which it has
  been exposed, the habits which we have observed, and the
  modifications in its organs which observation has shown us it
  possesses.

  "The first of these two conclusions is that believed up to the
  present day--namely, that held by nearly every one; it implies, in
  each animal, an unchanging organization and parts which have never
  varied, and which will never vary; it implies also that the
  circumstances of the places which each species of animal inhabits
  will never vary in these localities; for should they vary, the same
  animals could not live there, and the possibility of discovering
  similar forms elsewhere, and of transporting them there, would be
  forbidden.

  "The second conclusion is my own: it implies that, owing to the
  influence of circumstances on habits, and as the result of that of
  habits on the condition of the parts and even on that of the
  organization, each animal may receive in its parts and its
  organization, modifications susceptible of becoming very
  considerable, and of giving rise to the condition in which we find
  all animals.

  "To maintain that this second conclusion is unfounded, it is
  necessary at first to prove that each point of the surface of the
  globe never varies in its nature, its aspect, its situation whether
  elevated or depressed, its climate, etc., etc.; and likewise to
  prove that any part of animals does not undergo, even at the end of
  a long period, any modification by changes of circumstances, and by
  the necessity which directs them to another kind of life and action
  than that which is habitual to them.

  "Moreover, if a single fact shows that an animal for a long time
  under domestication differs from the wild form from which it has
  descended, and if in such a species in domesticity we find a great
  difference in conformation between the individuals submitted to
  such habits and those restricted to different habits, then it will
  be certain that the first conclusion does not conform to the laws of
  nature, and that, on the contrary, the second is perfectly in accord
  with them.

  "Everything combines then to prove my assertion--namely, that it is
  not the form, either of the body or of its parts, which gives rise
  to habits, and to the mode of life among animals; but that it is on
  the contrary the habits, the manner of living, and all the other
  influencing circumstances which have, after a time, constituted the
  form of the body and of the parts of animals. With the new forms,
  new faculties have been acquired, and gradually nature has come to
  form the animals as we actually see them.

  "Can there be in natural history a consideration more important, and
  to which we should give more attention, than that which I have just
  stated?

  "We will end this first part with the principles and the exposition
  of the natural classification of animals."

In the fourth chapter of the third part (vol. ii. pp. 276-301) Lamarck
treats of the internal feelings of certain animals, which provoke wants
(_besoins_). This is the subject which has elicited so much adverse
criticism and ridicule, and has in many cases led to the wholesale
rejection of all of Lamarck's views. It is generally assumed or stated
by Lamarck's critics, who evidently did not read his book carefully,
that while he claimed that the plants were evolved by the direct action
of the physical factors, that in the case of all the animals the process
was indirect. But this is not correct. He evidently, as we shall see,
places the lowest animals, those without (or what he supposed to be
without) a nervous system, in the same category as the plants. He
distinctly states at the outset that only certain animals and man are
endowed with this singular faculty, "which consists in being able to
experience _internal emotions_ which provoke the wants and different
external or internal causes, and which give birth to the power which
enables them to perform different actions."

"The nervous fluid," he says, "can, then, undergo movements in certain
parts of its mass, as well as in every part at once; moreover, it is
these latter movements which constitute the _general movements_
(_ébranlements_) of this fluid, and which we now proceed to consider.

  "The general movements of the nervous fluid are of two kinds;
  namely,

  "1. Partial movements (_ébranlements_), which finally become general
  and end in a reaction. It is the movements of this sort which
  produce feeling. We have treated of them in the third chapter.

  "2. The movements which are general from the time they begin, and
  which form no reaction. It is these which constitute internal
  emotions, and it is of them alone of which we shall treat.

  "But previously, it is necessary to say a word regarding the
  _feeling of existence_, because this feeling is the source from
  which the inner emotions originate.


  "_On the Feeling of Existence._

  "The feeling of existence (_sentiment d'existence_), which I shall
  call _inner feeling_,[183] so as to separate from it the idea of a
  general condition (_généralité_) which it does not possess, since it
  is not common to all living beings and not even to all animals, is
  a very obscure feeling, with which are endowed those animals
  provided with a nervous system sufficiently developed to give them
  the faculty of feeling.

  "This sentiment, very obscure as it is, is nevertheless very
  powerful, for it is the source of inner emotions which test
  (_éprouvent_) the individuals possessing it, and, as the result,
  this singular force urges these individuals to themselves produce
  the movements and the actions which their wants require. Moreover
  this feeling, considered as a very active _motor_, only acts thus by
  sending to the muscles which necessarily cause these movements and
  actions the nervous fluid which excites them....

  "Indeed, as the result of organic or vital movements which are
  produced in every animal, that which possesses a nervous system
  sufficiently developed has physical sensibility and continually
  receives in every inner and sensitive part impressions which
  continually affect it, and which it feels in general without being
  able to distinguish any single one.

  "The sentiment of existence [consciousness] is general, since almost
  every sensitive part of the body shares in it. 'It constitutes this
  _me_ (_moi_) with which all animals, which are only sensitive, are
  penetrated, without perceiving it, but which those possessing a
  brain are able to notice, having the power of thought and of giving
  attention to it. Finally, it is in all the source of a power which
  is aroused by wants, which acts effectively only by emotion, and
  through which the movements and actions derive the force which
  produces them'....

  "Finally, the inner feeling only manifests its power, and causes
  movements, when there exists a system for muscular movement, which
  is always dependent on the nervous system, and cannot take place
  without it."

The author then states that these emotions of the organic sense may
operate in the animals and in man either without or with an act of their
will.

  "From what has been said, we cannot doubt but that the inner and
  general feeling which urges the animals possessing a nervous system
  fitted for feeling should be susceptible of being aroused by the
  causes which affect it; moreover, these causes are always the need
  both of satisfying hunger, of escaping dangers, of avoiding pain, of
  seeking pleasure, or that which is agreeable to the individual, etc.

  "The emotions of the inner feeling can only be recognized by man,
  who alone pays attention to them, but he only perceives those which
  are strong, which excite his whole being, such as a view from a
  precipice, a tragic scene, etc."

Lamarck then divides the emotions into physical and moral, the latter
arising from our ideas, thoughts--in short, our intellectual acts--in
the account of which we need not follow him.

In the succeeding chapter (V.) the author dilates on the force which
causes actions in animals. "We know," he says "that plants can satisfy
their needs without moving, since they find their food in the environing
_milieux_. But it is not the same with animals, which are obliged to
move about to procure their sustenance. Moreover, most of them have
other wants to satisfy, which require other kinds of movements and
acts." This matter is discussed in the author's often leisurely and
prolix way, with more or less repetition, which we will condense.

The lowest animals--those destitute of a nervous system--move in
response to a stimulus from without. Nature has gradually created the
different organs of animals, varying the structure and situation of
these organs according to circumstances, and has progressively improved
their powers. She has begun by borrowing from without, so to speak--from
the environment--the _productive force_, both of organic movements and
those of the external parts. "She has thus transported this force [the
result of heat, electricity, and perhaps others (p. 307)] into the
animal itself, and, finally, in the most perfect animals she has placed
a great part of this force at their disposal, as I will soon show."

This force incessantly introduced into the lowest animals sets in motion
the visible fluids of the body and excites the irritability of their
contained parts, giving rise to different contractile movements which we
observe; hence the appearance of an irresistible propensity (_penchant_)
which constrains them to execute those movements which by their
continuity or their repetition give rise to habits.

The most imperfect animals, such as the _Infusoria_, especially the
monads, are nourished by absorption and by "an internal inhibition of
absorbed matters." "They have," he says, "no power of seeking their
food, they have not even the power of recognizing it, but they absorb it
because it comes in contact with every side of them (_avec tous les
points de leur individu_), and because the water in which they live
furnishes it to them in sufficient abundance."

"These frail animals, in which the subtile fluids of the environing
_milieux_ constitute the stimulating cause of the orgasm, of
irritability and of organic movements, execute, as I have said,
contractile movements which, provoked and varied without ceasing by this
stimulating cause, facilitate and hasten the absorptions of which I have
just spoken." ...


_On the Transportation of the force-producing Movements in the Interior
of Animals._

  "If nature were confined to the employment of its first
  means--namely, of a force entirely external and foreign to the
  animal--its work would have remained very important; the animals
  would have remained machines totally passive, and she would never
  have given origin in any of these living beings to the admirable
  phenomena of sensibility, of inmost feelings of existence which
  result therefrom, of the power of action, finally, of ideas, by
  which she can create the most wonderful of all, that of thought--in
  a word, intelligence.

  "But, wishing to attain these grand results, she has by slow degrees
  prepared the means, in gradually giving consistence to the internal
  parts of animals; in differentiating the organs, and in multiplying
  and farther forming the fluids contained, etc., after which she has
  transported into the interior of these animals that force productive
  of movements and of actions which in truth it would not dominate at
  first, but which she has come to place, in great part, at their
  disposition when their organization should become very much more
  perfect.

  "Indeed, from the time that the animal organization had sufficiently
  advanced in its structure to possess a nervous system--even slightly
  developed, as in insects--the animals provided with this
  organization were endowed with an intimate sense of their existence,
  and from that time the force productive of movements was conveyed
  into the very interior of the animal.

  "I have already made it evident that this internal force which
  produces movements and actions should derive its origin in the
  intimate feeling of existence which animals with a nervous system
  possess, and that this feeling, solicited or aroused by needs,
  should then start into motion the subtile fluid contained in the
  nerves and carry it to the muscles which should act, this producing
  the actions which the needs require.

  "Moreover, every want felt produces an emotion in the inner feeling
  of the individual which experiences it; and from this emotion of the
  feeling in question arises the force which gives origin to the
  movement of the parts which are placed in activity....

  "Thus, in the animals which possess the power of acting--namely, the
  force productive of movements and actions--the inner feeling, which
  on each occasion originates this force, being excited by some need,
  places in action the power or force in question; excites the
  movement of displacement in the subtile fluid of the nerves--which
  the ancients called _animal spirits_; directs this fluid towards
  that of its organs which any want impels to action; finally makes
  this same fluid flow back into its habitual reservoirs when the
  needs no longer require the organ to act.

  "The inner feeling takes the place of the _will_; for it is now
  important to consider that every animal which does not possess the
  special organ in which or by which it executes thoughts, judgments,
  etc., has in reality no will, does not make a choice, and
  consequently cannot control the movements which its inner feeling
  excites. _Instinct_ directs these actions, and we shall see that
  this direction always results from emotions of the inner feeling, in
  which intelligence has no part, and from the organization even which
  the habits have modified, in such a manner that the needs of animals
  which are in this category, being necessarily limited and always
  the same in the same species, the inner feeling and, consequently,
  the power of acting, always produces the same actions.

  "It is not the same in animals which besides a nervous system have a
  brain [the author meaning the higher vertebrates], and which make
  comparisons, judgments, thoughts, etc. These same animals control
  more or less their power of action according to the degree of
  perfection of their brain; and although they are still strongly
  subjected to the results of their habits, which have modified their
  structure, they enjoy more or less freedom of the will, can choose,
  and can vary their acts, or at least some of them."

Lamarck then treats of the consumption and exhaustion of the nervous
fluid in the production of animal movements, resulting in fatigue.

He next occupies himself with the origin of the inclination to the same
actions, and of instinct in animals.

  "The cause of the well-known phenomenon which constrains almost all
  animals to always perform the same acts, and that which gives rise
  in man to a propensity (_penchant_) to repeat every action, becoming
  habitual, assuredly merits investigation.

  "The animals which are only 'sensible'[184]--namely, which possess
  no brain, cannot think, reason, or perform intelligent acts, and
  their perceptions being often very confused--do not reason and can
  scarcely vary their actions. They are, then, invariably bound by
  habits. Thus the insects, which of all animals endowed with feeling
  have the least perfect nervous system,[185] have perceptions of
  objects which affect them, and seem to have memory of them when they
  are repeated. Yet they can vary their actions and change their
  habits, though they do not possess the organ whose acts could give
  them the means.


  "_On the Instincts of Animals._

  "We define instinct as the sum (_ensemble_) of the decisions
  (_déterminations_) of animals in their actions; and, indeed, some
  have thought that these determinations were the product of a
  rational choice, and consequently the fruit of experience. Others,
  says Cabanis, may think with the observers of all ages that several
  of these decisions should not be ascribed to any kind of reasoning,
  and that, without ceasing as for that to have their source in
  physical sensibility, they are most often formed without the will of
  the individuals able to have any other part than in better directing
  the execution. It should be added, without the will having any part
  in it; for when it does not act, it does not, of course, direct the
  execution.

  "If it had been considered that all the animals which enjoy the
  power of sensation have their inner feeling susceptible of being
  aroused by their needs, and that the movements of their nervous
  fluids, which result from these emotions, are constantly directed by
  this inner sentiment and by habits, then it has been felt that in
  all the animals deprived of intelligence all the decisions of action
  can never be the result of a rational choice, of judgment, of
  profitable experience--in a word, of will--but that they are
  subjected to needs which certain sensations excite, and which awaken
  the inclinations which urge them on.

  "In the animals even which enjoy the power of performing certain
  intelligent acts, it is still more often the inner feeling and the
  inclinations originating from habits which decide, without choice,
  the acts which animals perform.

  "Moreover, although the executing power of movements and of actions,
  as also the cause which directs them, should be entirely internal,
  it is not well, as has been done,[186] to limit to internal
  impressions the primary cause or provocation of these acts, with the
  intention to restrict to external impressions that which provokes
  intelligent acts; for, from what few facts are known bearing on
  these considerations, we are convinced that, either way, the causes
  which arouse and provoke acts are sometimes internal and sometimes
  external, that these same causes give rise in reality to impressions
  all of which act internally.

  "According to the idea generally attached to the word _instinct_ the
  faculty which this word expresses is considered as a light which
  illuminates and guides animals in their actions, and which is with
  them what reason is to us. No one has shown that instinct can be a
  force which calls into action; that this force acts effectively
  without any participation of the will, and that it is constantly
  directed by acquired inclinations."

There are, the author states, two kinds of causes which can arouse the
inner feeling (organic sense)--namely, those which depend on
intellectual acts, and those which, without arising from it, immediately
excite it and force it to direct its power of acting in the direction of
acquired inclinations.

  "These are the only causes of this last kind, which constitute all
  the acts of _instinct_; and as these acts are not the result of
  deliberation, of choice, of judgment, the actions which arise from
  them always satisfy, surely and without error, the wants felt and
  the propensities arising from habits.

  "Hence, _instinct_ in animals is an inclination which necessitates
  that from sensations provoked while giving rise to wants the animal
  is impelled to act without the participation of any thought or any
  act of the will.

  "This propensity owes to the organization what the habits have
  modified in its favor, and it is excited by impressions and wants
  which arouse the organic sense of the individual and put it in the
  way of sending the nervous fluid in the direction which the
  propensity in activity needs to the muscles to be placed in action.

  "I have already said that the habit of exercising such an organ, or
  such a part of the body, to satisfy the needs which often spring up,
  should give to the subtile fluid which changes its place where is to
  be operated the power which causes action so great a facility in
  moving towards this organ, where it has been so often employed, that
  this habit should in a way become inherent in the nature of the
  individual, which is unable to change it.

  "Moreover, the wants of animals possessing a nervous system being,
  in each case, dependent on the Structure of these organisms, are:

  "1. Of obtaining any kind of food;

  "2. Of yielding to sexual fecundation which excites in them certain
  sensations;

  "3. Of avoiding pain;

  "4. Of seeking pleasure or happiness.

  "To satisfy these wants they contract different kinds of habits,
  which are transformed into so many propensities, which they can
  neither resist nor change. From this originate their habitual
  actions, and their special propensities to which we give the name
  of instinct.[187]

  "This propensity of animals to preserve their habits and to renew
  the actions resulting from them being once acquired, is then
  propagated by means of reproduction or generation, which preserves
  the organization and the disposition of parts in the state thus
  attained, so that this same propensity already exists in the new
  individuals even before they have exercised it.

  "It is thus that the same habits and the same _instinct_ are
  perpetuated from generation to generation in the different species
  or races of animals, without offering any notable variation,[188] so
  long as it does not suffer change in the circumstances essential to
  the mode of life."


  "_On the Industry of Certain Animals._

  "In those animals which have no brain that which we call _industry_
  as applied to certain of their actions does not deserve such a name,
  for it is a mistake to attribute to them a faculty which they do not
  possess.

  "Propensities transmitted and received by heredity (_génération_);
  habits of performing complicated actions, and which result from
  these acquired propensities; finally, different difficulties
  gradually and habitually overcome by as many emotions of the organic
  sense (_sentiment intérieur_), constitute the sum of actions which
  are always the same in the individuals of the same race, to which we
  inconsiderately give the name of _industry_.

  "The instinct of animals being formed by the habit of satisfying the
  four kinds of wants mentioned above, and resulting from the
  propensities acquired for a long time which urge them on in a way
  determined for each species, there comes to pass, in the case of
  some, only a complication in the actions which can satisfy these
  four kinds of wants, or certain of them, and, indeed, only the
  different difficulties necessary to be overcome have gradually
  compelled the animal to extend and make contrivances, and have led
  it, without choice or any intellectual act, but only by the emotions
  of the organic sense, to perform such and such acts.

  "Hence the origin, in certain animals, of different complicated
  actions, which has been called _industry_, and which are so
  enthusiastically admired, because it has always been supposed, at
  least tacitly, that these actions were contrived and deliberately
  planned, which is plainly erroneous. They are evidently the fruit of
  a necessity which has expanded and directed the habits of the
  animals performing them, and which renders them such as we observe.

  "What I have just said is especially applicable to the invertebrate
  animals, in which there enters no act of intelligence. None of
  these can indeed freely vary its actions; none of them has the power
  of abandoning what we call its _industry_ to adopt any other kind.

  "There is, then, nothing wonderful in the supposed industry of the
  ant-lion (_Myrmeleon formica-leo_), which, having thrown up a
  hillock of movable sand, waits until its booty is thrown down to the
  bottom of its funnel by the showers of sand to become its victim;
  also there is none in the manoeuvre of the oyster, which, to
  satisfy all its wants, does nothing but open and close its shell. So
  long as their organization is not changed they will always, both of
  them, do what we see them do, and they will do it neither
  voluntarily nor rationally.

  "This is not the case with the vertebrate animals, and it is among
  them, especially in the birds and mammals, that we observe in their
  actions traces of a true _industry_; because in difficult cases
  their intelligence, in spite of their propensity to habits, can aid
  them in varying their actions. These acts, however, are not common,
  and are only slightly manifested in certain races which have
  exercised them more, as we have had frequent occasion to remark."

Lamarck then (chapter vi.) examines into the nature of the _will_, which
he says is really the principle underlying all the actions of animals.
The will, he says, is one of the results of thought, the result of a
reflux of a portion of the nervous fluid towards the parts which are to
act.

He compares the brain to a register on which are imprinted ideas of all
kinds acquired by the individual, so that this individual provokes at
will an effusion of the nervous fluid on this register, and directs it
to any particular page. The remainder of the second volume
(chapter vii.) is devoted to the understanding, its origin and that of
ideas. The following additions relative to chapters vii. and viii. of
the first part of this work are from vol. ii., pp. 451-466.

In the last of June, 1809, the menagerie of the Museum of Natural
History having received a Phoca (_Phoca vitulina_), Lamarck, as he says,
had the opportunity of observing its movements and habits. After
describing its habits in swimming and moving on land and observing its
relation to the clawed mammals, he says his main object is to remark
that the seals do not have the hind legs arranged in the same direction
as the axis of their body, because these animals are constrained to
habitually use them to form a caudal fin, closing and widening, by
spreading their digits, the paddle (_palette_) which results from their
union.

  "The morses, on the contrary, which are accustomed to feed on grass
  near the shore, never use their hind feet as a caudal fin; but their
  feet are united together with the tail, and cannot separate. Thus in
  animals of similar origin we see a new proof of the effect of habits
  on the form and structure of organs."

He then turns to the flying mammals, such as the flying squirrel
(_Sciurus volans_, _ærobates_, _petaurista_, _sagitta_, and
_volucella_), and then explains the origin of their adaptation for
flying leaps.

  "These animals, more modern than the seals, having the habit of
  extending their limbs while leaping to form a sort of _parachute_,
  can _only_ make a very prolonged leap when they glide down from a
  tree or spring only a short distance from one tree to another. Now,
  by frequent repetitions of such leaps, in the individuals of these
  races the skin of their sides is expanded on each side into a loose
  membrane, which connects the hind and fore legs, and which,
  enclosing a volume of air, prevents their sudden falling. These
  animals are, moreover, without membranes between the fingers and
  toes.

  "The Galeopithecus (_Lemur volans_), undoubtedly a more ancient form
  but with the same habits as the flying squirrel (_Pteromys Geoff._),
  has the skin of the _flancs_ more ample, still more developed,
  connecting not only the hinder with the fore legs, but in addition
  the fingers and the tail with the hind feet. Moreover, they leap
  much farther than the flying squirrels, and even make a sort of
  flight.[189]

  "Finally, the different bats are probably mammals still older than
  the Galeopithecus, in the habit of extending their membrane and even
  their fingers to encompass a greater volume of air, so as to sustain
  their bodies when they fly out into the air.

  "By these habits, for so long a period contracted and preserved, the
  bats have obtained not only lateral membranes, but also an
  extraordinary elongation of the fingers of their fore feet (with the
  exception of the thumb), between which are these very ample
  membranes uniting them; so that these membranes of the hands become
  continuous with those of the flanks, and with those which connect
  the tail with the two hind feet, forming in these animals great
  membranous wings with which they fly perfectly, as everybody knows.

  "Such is then the power of habits, which have a singular influence
  on the conformation of parts, and which give to the animals which
  have for a long time contracted certain of them, faculties not found
  in other animals.

  "As regards the amphibious animals of which I have often spoken, it
  gives me pleasure to communicate to my readers the following
  reflections which have arisen from an examination of all the objects
  which I have taken into consideration in my studies, and seen more
  and more to be confirmed.

  "I do not doubt but that the mammals have in reality originated from
  them, and that they are the veritable cradle (_berceau_) of the
  entire animal kingdom.

  "Indeed, we see that the least perfect animals (and they are the
  most numerous) live only in the water; hence it is probable, as I
  have said (vol. ii., p. 85), that it is only in the water or in very
  humid places that nature causes and still forms, under favorable
  conditions, direct or spontaneous generations which have produced
  the simplest animalcules and those from which have successively been
  derived all the other animals.

  "We know that the Infusoria, the polyps, and the Radiata only live
  in the water; that the worms even only live some in the water and
  others in very damp places.

  "Moreover, regarding the worms, which seem to form an initial branch
  of the animal scale, since it is evident that the Infusoria form
  another branch, we may suppose that among those of them which are
  wholly aquatic--namely, which do not live in the bodies of other
  animals, such as the Gordius and many others still unknown--there
  are doubtless a great many different aquatic forms; and that among
  these aquatic worms, those which afterwards habitually expose
  themselves to the air have probably produced amphibious insects,
  such as the mosquitoes, the ephemeras, etc., etc., which have
  successively given origin to all the insects which live solely in
  the air. But several races of these having changed their habits by
  the force of circumstances, and having formed habits of a life
  solitary, retired, or hidden, have given rise to the arachnides,
  almost all of which also live in the air.

  "Finally, those of the arachnides which have frequented the water,
  which have consequently become progressively habituated to live in
  it, and which finally cease to expose themselves to the air--this
  indicates the relations which, connecting the Scolopendræ to Julus,
  this to the Oniscus, and the last to Asellus, shrimps, etc., have
  caused the existence of all the Crustacea.

  "The other aquatic worms which are never exposed to the air,
  multiplying and diversifying their races with time, and gradually
  making progress in the complication of their structure, have caused
  the formation of the Annelida, Cirripedia, and molluscs, which
  together form an uninterrupted portion of the animal scale.

  "In spite of the considerable hiatus which we observe between the
  known molluscs and the fishes, the molluscs, whose origin I have
  just indicated, have, by the intermediation of those yet remaining
  unknown, given origin to the fishes, as it is evident that the
  latter have given rise to the reptiles.

  "In continuing to consult the probabilities on the origin of
  different animals, we cannot doubt but that the reptiles, by two
  distinct branches which circumstances have brought about, have given
  rise on one side to the formation of birds, and on the other to
  that of amphibious mammals, which have given in their turn origin to
  all the other mammals.[190]

  "Indeed, the fishes having caused the formation of Batrachia, and
  these of the Ophidian reptiles, both having only one auricle in the
  heart, nature has easily come to give a heart with a double auricle
  to other reptiles which constitute two special branches; finally,
  she has easily arrived at the end of forming, in the animals which
  had originated from each of these branches, a heart with two
  ventricles.

  "Thus, among the reptiles whose heart has a double auricle, on the
  one side, the Chelonians seem to have given origin to the birds; if,
  independently of several relations which we cannot disregard, I
  should place the head of a tortoise on the neck of certain birds, I
  should perceive almost no disparity in the general physiognomy of
  the factitious animal; and on the other side, the saurians,
  especially the 'planicaudes,' such as the crocodiles, seem to have
  given origin to the amphibious mammals.

  "If the branch of the Chelonians has given rise to birds, we can yet
  presume that the palmipede aquatic birds, especially the
  _brevipennes_, such as the penguins and the _manchots_, have given
  origin to the monotremes.

  "Finally, if the branch of saurians has given rise to the amphibious
  mammals, it will be most probable that this branch is the source
  whence all the mammals have taken their origin.

  "I therefore believe myself authorized to think that the terrestrial
  mammals originally descended from those aquatic mammals that we call
  Amphibia. Because the latter being divided into three branches by
  the diversity of the habits which, with the lapse of time, they have
  adopted, some have caused the formation of the Cetacea, others that
  of the ungulated mammals, and still others that of the unguiculate
  mammals.

  "For example, those of the Amphibia which have preserved the habit
  of frequenting the shores differ in the manner of taking their food.
  Some among them accustoming themselves to browse on herbage, such as
  the morses and lamatines, gradually gave origin to the ungulate
  mammals, such as the pachyderms, ruminants, etc.; the others, such
  as the Phocidæ, contracting the habit of feeding on fishes and
  marine animals, caused the existence of the unguiculate mammals, by
  means of races which, while becoming differentiated, became entirely
  terrestrial.

  "But those aquatic mammals which would form the habit of never
  leaving the water, and only rising to breathe at the surface, would
  probably give origin to the different known cetaceans. Moreover, the
  ancient and complete habitation of the Cetacea in the ocean has so
  modified their structure that it is now very difficult to recognize
  the source whence they have derived their origin.

  "Indeed, since the enormous length of time during which these
  animals have lived in the depths of the sea, never using their hind
  feet in seizing objects, their disused feet have wholly disappeared,
  as also their skeleton, and even the pelvis serving as their
  attachment.

  "The alteration which the cetaceans have undergone in their limbs,
  owing to the influence of the medium in which they live and the
  habits which they have there contracted, manifests itself also in
  their fore limbs, which, entirely enveloped by the skin, no longer
  show externally the fingers in which they end; so that they only
  offer on each side a fin which contains concealed within it the
  skeleton of a hand.

  "Assuredly, the cetaceans being mammals, it entered into the plan of
  their structure to have four limbs like the others, and
  consequently a pelvis to sustain their hind legs. But here, as
  elsewhere, that which is lacking in them is the result of atrophy
  brought about, at the end of a long time, by the want of use of the
  parts which were useless.

  "If we consider that in the Phocæ, where the pelvis still exists,
  this pelvis is impoverished, narrowed, and with no projections on
  the hips, we see that the lessened (_médiocre_) use of the hind feet
  of these animals must be the cause, and that if this use should
  entirely cease, the hind limbs and even the pelvis would in the end
  disappear.

  "The considerations which I have just presented may doubtless appear
  as simple conjectures, because it is possible to establish them only
  on direct and positive proofs. But if we pay any attention to the
  observations which I have stated in this work, and if then we
  examine carefully the animals which I have mentioned, as also the
  result of their habits and their surroundings, we shall find that
  these conjectures will acquire, after this examination, an eminent
  probability.

  "The following _tableau_[191] will facilitate the comprehension of
  what I have just stated. It will be seen that, in my opinion, the
  animal scale begins at least by two special branches, and that in
  the course of its extent some branchlets (_rameaux_) would seem to
  terminate in certain places.

  "This series of animals beginning with two branches where are
  situated the most imperfect, the first of these branches received
  their existence only by direct or spontaneous generation.

  "A strong reason prevents our knowing the changes successively
  brought about which have produced the condition in which we observe
  them; it is because we are never witnesses of these changes. Thus we
  see the work when done, but never watching them during the process,
  we are naturally led to believe that things have always been as we
  see them, and not as they have progressively been brought about.

  "Among the changes which nature everywhere incessantly produces in
  her _ensemble_, and her laws remain always the same, such of these
  changes as, to bring about, do not need much more time than the
  duration of human life, are easily understood by the man who
  observes them; but he cannot perceive those which are accomplished
  at the end of a considerable time.

  "If the duration of human life only extended to the length of a
  _second_, and if there existed one of our actual clocks mounted and
  in movement, each individual of our species who should look at the
  hour-hand of this clock would never see it change its place in the
  course of his life, although this hand would really not be
  stationary. The observations of thirty generations would never learn
  anything very evident as to the displacement of this hand, because
  its movement, only being that made during half a minute, would be
  too slight to make an impression; and if observations much more
  ancient should show that this same hand had really moved, those who
  should see the statement would not believe it, and would suppose
  there was some error, each one having always seen the hand on the
  same point of the dial-plate.

  "I leave to my readers all the applications to be made regarding
  this supposition.

  "_Nature_, that immense totality of different beings and bodies, in
  every part of which exists an eternal circle of movements and
  changes regulated by law; totality alone unchangeable, so long as it
  pleases its SUBLIME AUTHOR to make it exist, should be regarded as a
  whole constituted by its parts, for a purpose which its Author alone
  knows, and not exclusively for any one of them.

  "Each part necessarily is obliged to change, and to cease to be one
  in order to constitute another, with interests opposed to those of
  all; and if it has the power of reasoning it finds this whole
  imperfect. In reality, however, this whole is perfect, and
  completely fulfils the end for which it was designed."

The last work in which Lamarck discussed the theory of descent was in
his introduction to the _Animaux sans Vertèbres_. But here the only
changes of importance are his four laws, which we translate, and a
somewhat different phylogeny of the animal kingdom.

The four laws differ from the two given in the _Philosophie zoologique_
in his theory (the second law) accounting for the origin of a new organ,
the result of a new need.

  "_First law_: Life, by its proper forces, continually tends to
  increase the volume of every body which possesses it, and to
  increase the size of its parts, up to a limit which it brings about.

  "_Second law_: The production of a new organ in an animal body
  results from the supervention of a new want (_besoin_) which
  continues to make itself felt, and of a new movement which this want
  gives rise to and maintains.

  "_Third law_: The development of organs and their power of action
  are constantly in ratio to the employment of these organs.

  "_Fourth law_: Everything which has been acquired, impressed upon,
  or changed in the organization of individuals, during the course of
  their life is preserved by generation and transmitted to the new
  individuals which have descended from those which have undergone
  those changes."

In explaining the second law he says:

  "The foundation of this law derives its proof from the third, in
  which the facts known allow of no doubt; for, if the forces of
  action of an organ, by their increase, further develop this
  organ--namely, increase its size and power, as is constantly proved
  by facts--we may be assured that the forces by which it acts, just
  originated by a new want felt, would necessarily give birth to the
  organ adapted to satisfy this new want, if this organ had not before
  existed.

  "In truth, in animals so low as not to be able to _feel_, it cannot
  be that we should attribute to a felt want the formation of a new
  organ, this formation being in such a case the product of a
  mechanical cause, as that of a new movement produced in a part of
  the fluids of the animal.

  "It is not the same in animals with a more complicated structure,
  and which are able to _feel_. They feel wants, and each want felt,
  exciting their inner feeling, forthwith sets the fluids in motion
  and forces them towards the point of the body where an action may
  satisfy the want experienced. Now, if there exists at this point an
  organ suitable for this action, it is immediately cited to act; and
  if the organ does not exist, and only the felt want be for instance
  pressing and continuous, gradually the organ originates, and is
  developed on account of the continuity and energy of its employment.

  "If I had not been convinced: 1, that the thought alone of an action
  which strongly interests it suffices to arouse the _inner feeling_
  of an individual; 2, that a felt want can itself arouse the feeling
  in question; 3, that every emotion of _inner feeling_, resulting
  from a want which is aroused, directs at the same instant a mass of
  nervous fluid to the points to be set in activity, that it also
  creates a flow thither of the fluids of the body, and especially
  nutrient ones; that, finally, it then places in activity the organs
  already existing, or makes efforts for the formation of those which
  would not have existed there, and which a continual want would
  therefore render necessary--I should have had doubts as to the
  reality of the law which I have just indicated.

  "But, although it may be very difficult to verify this law by
  observation, I have no doubt as to the grounds on which I base it,
  the necessity of its existence being involved in that of the third
  law, which is now well established.

  "I conceive, for example, that a _gasteropod mollusc_, which, as it
  crawls along, finds the need of feeling the bodies in front of it,
  makes efforts to touch those bodies with some of the foremost parts
  of its head, and sends to these every time supplies of nervous
  fluids, as well as other fluids--I conceive, I say, that it must
  result from this reiterated afflux towards the points in question
  that the nerves which abut at these points will, by slow degrees, be
  extended. Now, as in the same circumstances other fluids of the
  animal flow also to the same places, and especially nourishing
  fluids, it must follow that two or more tentacles will appear and
  develop insensibly under those circumstances on the points referred
  to.

  "This is doubtless what has happened to all the races of
  _Gasteropods_, whose wants have compelled them to adopt the habit of
  feeling bodies with some part of their head.

  "But if there occur, among the _Gasteropods_, any races which, by
  the circumstances which concern their mode of existence or life, do
  not experience such wants, then their head remains without
  tentacles; it has even no projection, no traces of tentacles, and
  this is what has happened in the case of _Bullæa_, _Bulla_, and
  _Chiton_."

In the _Supplément à la Distribution générale des Animaux_
(Introduction, p. 342), concerning the real order of origin of the
invertebrate classes, Lamarck proposes a new genealogical tree. He
states that the order of the animal series "is far from simple, that it
is branching, and seems even to be composed of several distinct series;"
though farther on (p. 456) he adds:

  "Je regarde _l'ordre de la production_ des animaux comme formé de
  deux séries distinctes.

  "Ainsi, je soumets à la méditation des zoologistes l'ordre présumé
  de la _formation_ des animaux, tel que l'exprime le tableau
  suivant:"

In the matter of the origin of instinct, as in evolution in general,
Lamarck appears to have laid the foundation on which Darwin's views,
though he throws aside Lamarck's factors, must rest. The "inherited
habit" theory is thus stated by Lamarck.

Instinct, he claims, is not common to all animals, since the lowest
forms, like plants, are entirely passive under the influences of the
surrounding medium; they have no wants, are automata.

  "But animals with a nervous system have _wants_, _i.e._, they feel
  hunger, sexual desires, they desire to avoid pain or to seek
  pleasure, etc. To satisfy these wants they contract habits, which
  are gradually transformed into so many propensities which they can
  neither resist nor change. Hence arise habitual actions and special
  _propensities_, to which we give the name of _instinct_.

  "These propensities are inherited and become innate in the young, so
  that they act instinctively from the moment of birth. Thus the same
  habits and instincts are perpetuated from one generation to another,
  with no _notable_ variations, so long as the species does not
  suffer change in the circumstances essential to its mode of life."

The same views are repeated in the introduction to the _Animaux sans
Vertèbres_ (1815), and again in 1820, in his last work, and do not need
to be translated, as they are repetitions of his previously published
views in the _Philosophie zoologique_.

Unfortunately, to illustrate his thoughts on instinct Lamarck does not
give us any examples, nor did he apparently observe to any great extent
the habits of animals. In these days one cannot follow him in drawing a
line--as regards the possession of instincts--between the lowest
organisms, or Protozoa, and the groups provided with a nervous system.

_Lamarck's meaning of the word "besoins," or wants or needs._--Lamarck's
use of the word wants or needs (_besoins_) has, we think, been greatly
misunderstood and at times caricatured or pronounced as "absurd." The
distinguished French naturalist, Quatrefages, although he was not
himself an evolutionist, has protested against the way Lamarck's views
have been caricatured. By nearly all authors he is represented as
claiming that by simply "willing" or "desiring" the individual bird or
other animal radically and with more or less rapidity changed its shape
or that of some particular organ or part of the body. This is, as we
have seen, by no means what he states. In no instance does he speak of
an animal as simply "desiring" to modify an organ in any way. The
doctrine of appetency attributed to Lamarck is without foundation. In
all the examples given he intimates that owing to changes in
environment, leading to isolation in a new area separating a large
number of individuals from their accustomed habitat, they are driven by
necessity (_besoin_) or new needs to adopt a new or different mode of
life--new habits. These efforts, whatever they may be--such as attempts
to fly, swim, wade, climb, burrow, etc., continued for a long time "in
all the individuals of its species," or the great number forced by
competition to migrate and become segregated from the others of the
original species--finally, owing to the changed surroundings, affect the
mass of individuals thus isolated, and their organs thus exercised in a
special direction undergo a slow modification.

Even so careful a writer as Dr. Alfred R. Wallace does not quite fairly,
or with exactness, state what Lamarck says, when in his classical essay
of 1858 he represents Lamarck as stating that the giraffe acquired its
long neck by _desiring_ to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs,
and constantly stretching its neck for the purpose. On the contrary, he
does not use the word "desiring" at all. What Lamarck does say is that--

  "The giraffe lives in dry, desert places, without herbage, so that
  it is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees, and is continually
  forced to reach up to them. It results from this habit, continued
  for a long time in all the individuals of its species, that its fore
  limbs have become so elongated that the giraffe, without raising
  itself erect on its hind legs, raises its head and reaches six
  meters high (almost twenty feet)."[192]

We submit that this mode of evolution of the giraffe is quite as
reasonable as the very hypothetical one advanced by Mr. Wallace;[193]
_i.e._, that a variety occurred with a longer neck than usual, and these
"at once secured a fresh range of pasture over the same ground as their
shorter-necked companions, and on the first scarcity of food were
thereby enabled to outlive them." Mr. Wallace's account also of
Lamarck's general theory appears to us to be one-sided, inadequate, and
misleading. He states it thus: "The hypothesis of Lamarck--that
progressive changes in species have been produced by the attempts of
animals to increase the development of their own organs, and thus modify
their structure and habits." This is a caricature of what Lamarck really
taught. Wants, needs (_besoins_), volitions, desires, are not mentioned
by Lamarck in his two fundamental laws (see p. 303), and when the word
_besoins_ is introduced it refers as much to the physiological needs as
to the emotions of the animal resulting from some new environment which
forces it to adopt new habits such as means of locomotion or of
acquiring food.

It will be evident to one who has read the original or the foregoing
translations of Lamarck's writings that he does not refer so much to
mental desires or volitions as to those physiological wants or needs
thrust upon the animal by change of circumstances or by competition; and
his _besoins_ may include lust, hunger, as well as the necessity of
making muscular exertions such as walking, running, leaping, climbing,
swimming, or flying.

As we understand Lamarck, when he speaks of the incipient giraffe or
long-necked bird as making efforts to reach up or outwards, the efforts
may have been as much physiological, reflex, or instinctive as mental. A
recent writer, Dr. R. T. Jackson, curiously and yet naturally enough
uses the same phraseology as Lamarck when he says that the long siphon
of the common clam (Mya) "was brought about by the effort to reach the
surface, induced by the habit of deep burial" in its hole.[194]

On the other hand, can we in the higher vertebrates entirely dissociate
the emotional and mental activities from their physiological or
instinctive acts? Mr. Darwin, in his _Expressions of the Emotions in Man
and Animals_, discusses in an interesting and detailed way the effects
of the feelings and passions on some of the higher animals.

It is curious, also, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin went at least as far as
Lamarck in claiming that the transformations of animals "are in part
produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and
aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or of
associations."

Cope, in the final chapter of his _Primary Factors of Organic
Evolution_, entitled "The Functions of Consciousness," goes to much
farther extremes than the French philosopher has been accused of doing,
and unhesitatingly attributes consciousness to all animals. "Whatever be
its nature," he says, "the preliminary to any animal movement which is
not automatic is an effort." Hence he regards effort as the immediate
source of all movement, and considers that the control of muscular
movements by consciousness is distinctly observable; in fact, he even
goes to the length of affirming that reflex acts are the product of
conscious acts, whereas it is plain enough that reflex acts are always
the result of some stimulus.

Another case mentioned by Lamarck in his _Animaux sans Vertèbres_, which
has been pronounced as absurd and ridiculous, and has aided in throwing
his whole theory into disfavor, is his way of accounting for the
development of the tentacles of the snail, which is quoted on p. 348.

This account is a very probable and, in fact, the only rational
explanation. The initial cause of such structures is the intermittent
stimulus of occasional contact with surrounding objects, the irritation
thus set up causing a flow of the blood to the exposed parts receiving
the stimuli. The general cause is the same as that concerned in the
production of horns and other hard defensive projections on the heads of
various animals.

In commenting on this case of the snail, Professor Cleland, in his just
and discriminating article on Lamarck, says:

  "However absurd this may seem, it must be admitted that, unlimited
  time having been once granted for organs to be developed in series
  of generations, the objections to their being formed in the way here
  imagined are only such as equally apply to the theory of their
  origin by natural selection.... In judging the reasonableness of the
  second law of Lamarck [referring to new wants, see p. 346] as
  compared with more modern and now widely received theories, it must
  be observed that it is only an extension of his third law; and that
  third law is a fact. The strengthening of the blacksmith's arm by
  use is proverbially notorious. It is, therefore, only the
  sufficiency of the Lamarckian hypothesis to explain the first
  commencement of new organs which is in question, if evolution by the
  mere operation of forces acting in the organic world be granted; and
  surely the Darwinian theory is equally helpless to account for the
  beginning of a new organ, while it demands as imperatively that
  every stage in the assumed hereditary development of an organ must
  have been useful.... Lamarck gave great importance to the influence
  of new wants acting indirectly by stimulating growth and use. Darwin
  has given like importance to the effects of accidental variations
  acting indirectly by giving advantage in the struggle for existence.
  The speculative writings of Darwin have, however, been interwoven
  with a vast number of beautiful experiments and observations bearing
  on his speculations, though by no means proving his theory of
  evolution; while the speculations of Lamarck lie apart from his
  wonderful descriptive labors, unrelieved by intermixture with other
  matters capable of attracting the numerous class who, provided they
  have new facts set before them, are not careful to limit themselves
  to the conclusions strictly deducible therefrom. But those who read
  the _Philosophie Zoologique_ will find how many truths often
  supposed to be far more modern are stated with abundant clearness in
  its pages." (_Encyc. Brit._, art. "Lamarck.")


COMPARATIVE SUMMARY OF THE VIEWS OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE THEORY OF
EVOLUTION, WITH DATES OF PUBLICATION.

  -------------+-------------+------------------------+------------+------------
               |Erasmus      |                        |Geoffroy St.|Charles
  Buffon       |Darwin       |Lamarck                 |Hilaire     |Darwin
  (1761-1778). |(1790-1794). |(1801-1809-1815).       |(1795-1831).|(1859).
  -------------+-------------+------------------------+------------+------------
               |             |                        |            |
  All animals  |All animals  |All organisms arose from|Unity of    |Universal
  possibly     |derived from |germs. First germ       |organization|tendency to
  derived from |a single     |originated by           |in animal   |fortuitous
  a single     |filament.    |spontaneous generation. |kingdom.    |variability
  type.        |             |Development from the    |            |assumed.
               |             |simple to the complex.  |Change of   |
  Time, its    |             |Animal series not       |"milieu     |
  great length,|             |continuous, but         |ambiant,"   |
  stated.      |             |tree-like; graduated    |direct.     |
               |             |from monad to man;      |            |
  Immutability |             |constructed the first   |            |
  of species   |             |phylogenetic tree.      |            |
  stated and   |             |                        |Founded the |Struggle
  then denied. |Time, great  |Time, great length of,  |doctrine of |for
               |length of,   |definitely postulated;  |homologies. |existence.
  Nature       |definitely   |its duration practically|            |
  advances by  |demanded.    |unlimited.              |            |
  gradations,  |             |                        |            |
  passing from |             |Uniformitarianism of    |            |
  one species  |             |Hutton and of Lyell     |Founder of  |
  to another by|             |anticipated.            |teratology. |
  imperceptible|             |                        |            |
  degrees.     |Effects of   |Effects of favorable    |His embryo- |
               |change of    |circumstances, such as  |logical     |
  Changes in   |climate,     |changes of environment, |studies     |
  distribution |direct       |climate, soil, food,    |influenced  |
  of land and  |(briefly     |temperature; direct in  |his         |
  water as     |stated).     |case of plants and      |philosophic |
  causing      |             |lowest animals, indirect|views.      |
  variation.   |             |in case of the higher   |            |
               |             |animals and man.        |            |
  Effects of   |             |                        |            |
  changes of   |             |Conditions of existence |            |
  climate,     |             |remaining constant,     |            |
  direct.      |             |species do not vary and |            |Competition
               |             |vice-versa.             |            |strongly
  Effects of   |             |                        |            |advocated.
  changes of   |             |Struggle for existence; |            |
  food.        |             |stronger devour the     |            |Natural
               |Domesti-     |weaker. Competition     |            |selection.
  Effects of   |cation       |stated in case of ai or |Species are |
  domesti-     |briefly      |sloth. Balance of       |"different  |Sexual
  cation.      |referred to. |nature.                 |modifi-     |selection.
               |             |                        |cations of  |
  Effects of   |Effects of   |Effects of use and      |one and the |Effects of
  use. (The    |use:         |disuse, discussed at    |same type." |use and
  only examples|characters   |length.                 |            |disuse (in
  given are the|produced by  |                        |            |some
  callosities  |their own    |Vestigial structures the|            |cases).
  on legs of   |exertions in |remains of organs       |            |
  camel, of    |consequence  |actively used by        |            |
  baboon, and  |of their     |ancestors of present    |            |
  the          |desires,     |forms.                  |            |
  thickening by|aversions,   |                        |            |
  use of soles |lust, hunger,|New wants or necessities|            |
  on man's     |and security.|induced by changes of   |            |
  feet.)       |             |climate, habitat, etc., |            |
               |Sexual       |result in production of |            |
               |selection,   |new propensities, new   |            |
               |law of       |habits, and functions.  |            |
               |battle.      |                        |            |
               |             |Change of habits        |            |
               |Protective   |originate organs; change|            |
               |mimicry.     |of functions create new |            |
               |             |organs; formation of new|            |
               |Origin of    |habits precede the      |            |
               |organs before|origin of new or        |            |
               |development  |modification of organs  |            |
               |of their     |already formed.         |            |
               |functions.   |                        |            |
               |             |Geographical isolation  |            |Isolation
               |Inheritance  |suggested as a factor in|            |"an
               |of acquired  |case of man.            |            |important
               |characters   |                        |            |element."
               |(vaguely     |Swamping effects of     |            |
               |stated).     |crossing.               |            |
               |             |                        |            |
               |Instincts    |Lamarck's definition of |            |
               |result of    |species the most        |            |
               |imitation.   |satisfactory yet stated.|            |
               |             |                        |            |
               |Opposed      |Inheritance of acquired |            |Inheritance
               |preformation |characters.             |            |of acquired
               |views of     |                        |            |characters.
               |Haller and   |Instinct the result of  |            |
               |Bonnet.      |inherited habits.       |            |
               |             |                        |            |
               |             |Opposed preformation    |            |
               |             |views; epigenesis       |            |
               |             |definitely stated and   |            |
               |             |adopted.                |            |
               |             |                        |            |
  -------------+-------------+------------------------+------------+------------


FOOTNOTES:

[179] [Cabanis.] _Rapp. du Phys. et du Moral de l'Homme_, pp. 38 à 39,
et 85.

[180] Lamarck's idea of the animal series was that of a branched one, as
shown by his genealogical tree on p. 193, and he explains that the
series begins at least by two special branches, these ending in
branchlets. He thus breaks entirely away from the old idea of a
continuous ascending series of his predecessors Bonnet and others.
Professor R. Hertwig therefore makes a decided mistake and does Lamarck
a great injustice in his "Zoölogy," where he states: "Lamarck, in
agreement with the then prevailing conceptions, regarded the animal
kingdom as a series grading from the lowest primitive animal up to man"
(p. 26); and again, on the next page, he speaks of "the theory of
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire and Lamarck" as having in it "as a fundamental
error the doctrine of the serial arrangement of the animal world"
(English Trans.). Hertwig is in error, and could never have carefully
read what Lamarck did say, or have known that he was the first to throw
aside the serial arrangement, and to sketch out a genealogical tree.

[181] The foregoing pages (283-286) are reprinted by the author from the
_Discours_ of 1803. See pp. 266-270.

[182] Perrier thus comments on this passage: "_Ici nous sommes bien
près, semble-t-il, non seulement de la lutte pour la vie telle one la
concevra Darwin, mais même de la sélection naturelle. Malheureusement,
au lieu de poursuivre l'idée, Lamarck aussitôt s'engage dans une autre
voie_," etc. (_La Philosophie zoologique avant Darwin_, p. 81).

[183] The expression "_sentiment intérieur_" may be nearly equivalent to
the "organic sense" of modern psychologists, but more probably
corresponds to our word consciousness.

[184] Lamarck's division of _Animaux sensibles_ comprises the insects,
arachnids, crustacea, annelids, cirrhipedes, and molluscs.

[185] Rather a strange view to take, as the brain of insects is now
known to be nearly as complex as that of mammals.

[186] Richerand, _Physiologie_. vol ii. p. 151.

[187] "As all animals do not have the power of performing voluntary
acts, so in like manner _instinct_ is not common to all animals: for
those lacking the nervous system also want the organic sense, and can
perform no instinctive acts.

"These imperfect animals are entirely passive, they do nothing of
themselves, they have no wants, and nature as regards them treats them
as she does plants. But as they are irritable in their parts, the means
which nature employs to maintain their existence enables them to execute
movements which we call actions."

It thus appears that Lamarck practically regards the lowest animals as
automata, but we must remember that the line he draws between animals
with and without a nervous system is an artificial one, as some of the
forms which he supposed to be destitute of a nervous system are now
known to possess one.

[188] It should be noticed that Lamarck does not absolutely state that
there are no variations whatever in instinct. His words are much less
positive: "_Sans offrer de variation notable._" This dues not exclude
the fact, discovered since his time, that instincts are more or less
variable, thus affording grounds for Darwin's theory of the origin of
new kinds of instincts from the "accidental variation of instincts."
Professor James' otherwise excellent version of Lamarck's view is
inexact and misleading when he makes Lamarck say that instincts are
"perpetuated _without variation_ from one generation to another, so long
as the outward conditions of existence remain the same" (_The Principles
of Psychology_, vol. ii., p. 678, 1890). He leaves out the word notable.
The italics are ours. Farther on (p. 337), it will be seen that Lamarck
acknowledges that in birds and mammals instinct is variable.

[189] It is interesting to compare with this Darwin's theory of the
origin of the same animals, the flying squirrels and Galeopithecus
(_Origin of Species_, 5th edition, New York, pp. 173-174), and see how
he invokes the Lamarckian factors of change of "climate and vegetation"
and "changing conditions of life," to originate the variations before
natural selection can act. His account is a mixture of Lamarckism with
the added Darwinian factors of competition and natural selection. We
agree with this view, that the change in environment and competition
sets the ball in motion, the work being finished by the selective
process. The act of springing and the first attempts at flying also
involve strong emotions and mental efforts, and it can hardly be denied
that these Lamarckian factors came into continual play during the
process of evolution of these flying creatures.

[190] This sagacious, though crude suggestion of the origin of birds and
mammals from the reptiles is now, after the lapse of nearly a century,
being confirmed by modern morphologists and palæontologists.

[191] Reproduced on page 193.

[192] This is taken from my article, "Lamarck and Neo-lamarckianism," in
the _Open Court_, Chicago, February, 1897. Compare also "Darwin Wrong,"
etc., by R. F. Licorish, M.D., Barbadoes, 1898, reprinted in _Natural
Science_, April, 1899.

[193] _Natural Selection_, pp. 41-42.

[194] _American Naturalist_, 1891, p. 17.




CHAPTER XVIII

LAMARCK'S THEORY AS TO THE EVOLUTION OF MAN


Lamarck's views on the origin of man are contained in his _Recherches
sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans_ (1802) and his _Philosophie
zoologique_, published in 1809. We give the following literal
translation in full of the views he presented in 1802, and which were
probably first advanced in lectures to his classes.

  "As to man, his origin, his peculiar nature, I have already stated
  in this book that I have not kept these subjects in view in making
  these observations. His extreme superiority over the other living
  creatures indicates that he is a privileged being who has in common
  with the animals only that which concerns animal life.

  "In truth, we observe a sort of gradation in the intelligence of
  animals, like what exists in the gradual improvement of their
  organization, and we remark that they have ideas, memory; that they
  think, choose, love, hate, that they are susceptible of jealousy,
  and that by different inflexions of their voice and by signs they
  communicate with and understand each other. It is not less evident
  that man alone is endowed with reason, and that on this account he
  is clearly distinguished from all the other productions of nature.

  "However, were it not for the picture that so many celebrated men
  have drawn of the weakness and lack of human reason; were it not
  that, independently of all the freaks into which the passions of man
  almost constantly allure him, the _ignorance_ which makes him the
  opinionated slave of custom and the continual dupe of those who wish
  to deceive him; were it not that his reason has led him into the
  most revolting errors, since we actually see him so debase himself
  as to worship animals, even the meanest, of addressing to them his
  prayers, and of imploring their aid; were it not, I say, for these
  considerations, should we feel authorized to raise any doubts as to
  the excellence of this special light which is the attribute of man?

  "An observation which has for a long time struck me is that, having
  remarked that the habitual use and exercise of an organ
  proportionally develops its size and functions, as the lack of
  employment weakens in the same proportion its power, and even more
  or less completely atrophies it, I am apprised that of all the
  organs of man's body which is the most strongly submitted to this
  influence, that is to say, in which the effects of exercise and of
  habitual use are the most considerable, is it not the organ of
  thought--in a word, is it not the brain of man?

  "Compare the extraordinary difference existing in the degree of
  intelligence of a man who rarely exercises his powers of thought,
  who has always been accustomed to see but a small number of things,
  only those related to his ordinary wants and to his limited desires;
  who at no time thinks about these same objects, because he is
  obliged to occupy himself incessantly with providing for these same
  wants; finally, who has few ideas, because his attention,
  continually fixed on the same things, makes him notice nothing, that
  he makes no comparisons, that he is in the very heart of nature
  without knowing it, that he looks upon it almost in the same way as
  do the beasts, and that all that surrounds him is nothing to him:
  compare, I say, the intelligence of this individual with that of the
  man who, prepared at the outset by education, has contracted the
  useful practice of exercising the organ of his thought in devoting
  himself to the study of the principal branches of knowledge; who
  observes and compares everything he sees and which affects him; who
  forgets himself in examining everything he can see, who insensibly
  accustoms himself to judge of everything for himself, instead of
  giving a blind assent to the authority of others; finally, who,
  stimulated by reverses and especially by injustice, quietly rises by
  reflection to the causes which have produced all that we observe
  both in nature and in human society; then you will appreciate how
  enormous is the difference between the intelligence of the two men
  in question.

  "If Newton, Bacon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and so many other men have
  done honor to the human species by the extent of their intelligence
  and their genius, how nearly does the mass of brutish, ignorant men
  approach the animal, becoming a prey to the most absurd prejudices
  and constantly enslaved by their habits, this mass forming the
  majority of all nations?

  "Search deeply the facts in the comparison I have just made, you
  will see how in one part the organ which serves for acts of thought
  is perfected and acquires greater size and power, owing to sustained
  and varied exercise, especially if this exercise offers no more
  interruptions than are necessary to prevent the exhaustion of its
  powers; and, on the other hand, you will perceive how the
  circumstances which prevent an individual from exercising this
  organ, or from exercising it habitually only while considering a
  small number of objects which are always of the same nature, impede
  the development of his intellectual faculties.

  "After what I have just stated as to the results in man of a slight
  exercise of the organ by which he thinks, we shall no longer be
  astonished to see that in the nations which have come to be the most
  distinguished, because there is among them a small number of men who
  have been able, by observation and reflection, to create or advance
  the higher sciences, the multitude in these same nations have not
  been for all that exempted from the most absurd errors, and have not
  the less always been the dupe of impostors and victims of their
  prejudices.

  "Such is, in fact, the fatality attached to the destiny of man that,
  with the exception of a small number of individuals who live under
  favorable though special circumstances, the multitude, forced to
  continually busy itself with providing for its needs, remains
  permanently deprived of the knowledge which it should acquire; in
  general, exercises to a very slight extent the organ of its
  intelligence; preserves and propagates a multitude of prejudices
  which enslave it, and cannot be as happy as those who, guiding it,
  are themselves guided by reason and justice.

  "As to the animals, besides the fact that they in descending order
  have the brain less developed, they are otherwise proportionally
  more limited in the means of exercising and of varying their
  intellectual processes. They each exercise them only on a single or
  on some special points, on which they become more or less expert
  according to their species. And while their degree of organization
  remains the same and the nature of their needs (_besoins_) does not
  vary, they can never extend the scope of their intelligence, nor
  apply it to other objects than to those which are related to their
  ordinary needs.

  "Some among them, whose structure is a little more perfect than in
  others, have also greater means of varying and extending their
  intellectual faculties; but it is always within limits circumscribed
  by their necessities and habits.

  "The power of habit which is found to be still so great in man,
  especially in one who has but slightly exercised the organ of his
  thought, is among animals almost insurmountable while their physical
  state remains the same. Nothing compels them to vary their powers,
  because they suffice for their wants and these require no change.
  Hence it is constantly the same objects which exercise their degree
  of intelligence, and it results that these actions are always the
  same in each species.

  "The sole acts of variation, _i.e._, the only acts which rise above
  the limits of habits, and which we see performed in animals whose
  organization allows them to, are _acts of imitation_. I only speak
  of actions which they perform voluntarily or freely (_actions qu'ils
  font de leur plein gré_).

  "Birds, very limited in this respect in the powers which their
  structure furnishes, can only perform acts of imitation with their
  vocal organ; this organ, by their habitual efforts to render the
  sounds, and to vary them, becomes in them very perfect. Thus we know
  that several birds (the parrot, starling, raven, jay, magpie, canary
  bird, etc.) imitate the sounds they hear.

  "The monkeys, which are, next to man, the animals by their structure
  having the best means to this end, are most excellent imitators, and
  there is no limit to the things they can mimic.

  "In man, infants which are still of the age when simple ideas are
  formed on various subjects, and who think but little, forming no
  complex ideas, are also very good imitators of everything which they
  see or hear.

  "But if each order of things in animals is dependent on the state
  of organization occurring in each of them, which is not doubted,
  there is no occasion for thinking that in these same animals the
  order which is superior to all the others in organization is
  proportionally so also in extent of means, invariability of actions,
  and consequently in intellectual powers.

  "For example, in the mammals which are the most highly organized,
  the _Quadrumana_, which form a part of them, have, besides the
  advantages over other mammals, a conformation in several of their
  organs which considerably increases their powers, which allows of a
  great variability in their actions, and which extends and even makes
  predominant their intelligence, enabling them to deal with a greater
  variety of objects with which to exercise their brain. It will
  doubtless be said: But although man may be a true mammal in his
  general structure, and although among the mammals the _Quadrumana_
  are most nearly allied to him, this will not be denied, not only
  that man is strongly distinguished from the _Quadrumana_ by a great
  superiority of intelligence, but he is also very considerably so in
  several structural features which characterize him.

  "First, the occipital foramen being situated entirely at the base of
  the cranium of man and not carried up behind, as in the other
  vertebrates, causes his head to be posed at the extremity of the
  vertebral column as on a pivot, not bowed down forward, his face not
  looking towards the ground. This position of the head of man, who
  can easily turn it to different sides, enables him to see better a
  larger number of objects at one time, than the much inclined
  position of the head of other mammals allows them to see.

  "Secondly, the remarkable mobility of the fingers of the hand of
  man, which he employs either all together or several together, or
  each separately, according to his pleasure, and besides, the sense
  of touch highly developed at the extremity of these same fingers,
  enables him to judge the nature of the bodies which surround him, to
  recognize them, to make use of them--means which no other animals
  possess to such a degree.

  "Thirdly, by the state of his organization man is able to hold
  himself up and walk erect. He has, for this attitude which is
  natural to him, large muscles at the lower extremities which are
  adapted to this end, and it would thus be as difficult to walk
  habitually on his four extremities as it would be for the other
  mammals, and even for the _Quadrumana_, to walk so habitually erect
  on the soles of their feet.

  "Moreover, man is not truly quadrumanous; for he has not, like the
  monkeys, an almost equal facility in using the fingers of his feet,
  and of seizing objects with them. In the feet of man the thumbs are
  not in opposition to the other fingers to use in grasping, as in
  monkeys, etc.

  "I appreciate all these reasons, and I see that man, although near
  the _Quadrumana_, is so distinct that he alone represents a separate
  order, belonging to a single genus and species, offering, however,
  many different varieties. This order may be, if it is desired, that
  of the _Bimana_.

  "However, if we consider that all the characteristics which have
  been cited are only differences in degree of structure, may we not
  suppose that this special condition of organization of man _has been
  gradually acquired at the close of a long period of time, with the
  aid of circumstances which have proved favorable?_[195] What a
  subject for reflection for those who have the courage to enter into
  it!

  "If the _Quadrumana_ have not the occipital opening situated
  directly at the base of the cranium as in man, it is assuredly much
  less raised posteriorly than in the dog, cat, and all the other
  mammals. Thus they all may quite often stand erect, although this
  attitude for them is very irksome.

  "I have not observed the situation of the occipital opening of the
  jacko or orang-outang (_Simia satyrus_ L.); but as I know that this
  animal almost habitually walks erect, though it has no strength in
  its legs, I suppose that the occipital foramen is not situated so
  far from the base of the skull as in the other _Quadrumana_.

  "The head of the negro, less flattened in front than that of the
  European man, necessarily has the occipital foramen central.

  "The more should the jacko contract the habit of walking about, the
  less mobility would he have in his toes, so that the thumbs of the
  feet, which are already much shorter than the other digits, would
  gradually cease to be placed in opposition to the other toes, and to
  be useful in grasping. The muscles of its lower extremities would
  acquire proportionally greater thickness and strength. Then the
  increased or more frequent exercise of the fingers of its hands
  would develop nervous masses at their extremities, thus rendering
  the sense of touch more delicate. This is what our train of
  reasoning indicates from the consideration of a multitude of facts
  and observations which support it."[196]

The subject is closed by a quotation from Grandpré on the habits of the
chimpanzee. It is not of sufficient importance to be here reproduced.

Seven years after the publication of these views, Lamarck again returns
to the subject in his _Philosophie zoologique_, which we translate.


  "_Some Observations Relative to Man_.

  "If man were distinguished from the animals by his structure alone,
  it would be easy to show that the structural characters which place
  him, with his varieties, in a family by himself, are all the product
  of former changes in his actions, and in the habits which he has
  adopted and which have become special to the individuals of his
  species.

  "Indeed, if any race whatever of _Quadrumana_, especially the most
  perfect, should lose, by the necessity of circumstances or from any
  other cause, the habit of climbing trees, and of seizing the
  branches with the feet, as with the hands, to cling to them; and if
  the individuals of this race, during a series of generations, should
  be obliged to use their feet only in walking, and should cease to
  use their hands as feet, there is no doubt, from the observations
  made in the preceding chapter, that these _Quadrumana_ would be
  finally transformed into _Bimana_, and that the thumbs of their feet
  would cease to be shorter than the fingers, their feet only being of
  use for walking.

  "Moreover, if the individuals of which I speak were impelled by the
  necessity of rising up and of looking far and wide, of endeavoring
  to stand erect, and of adopting this habit constantly from
  generation to generation, there is no doubt that their feet would
  gradually and imperceptibly assume a conformation adapted for an
  erect posture, that their legs would develop calves, and that these
  creatures would not afterwards walk as they do now, painfully on
  both hands and feet.

  "Also, if these same individuals should cease using their jaws for
  biting in self-defence, tearing or seizing, or using them like
  nippers in cutting leaves for food, and should they only be used in
  chewing food, there is no doubt that their facial angle would become
  higher, that their muzzle would become shorter and shorter, and that
  in the end this being entirely effaced, their incisor teeth would
  become vertical.

  "Now supposing that a race of _Quadrumana_, as for example the most
  perfect, had acquired, by habits constant in every individual, the
  structure I have just described, and the power of standing erect and
  of walking upright, and that as the result of this it had come to
  dominate the other races of animals, we should then conceive:

  "1. That this race farther advanced in its faculties, having arrived
  at the stage when it lords it over the others, will be spread over
  the surface of the globe in every suitable place;

  "2. That it will hunt the other higher races of animals and will
  struggle with them for preëminence (_lui disputer les biens de la
  terre_) and that it will force them to take refuge in regions which
  it does not occupy;

  "3. That being injured by the great multiplication of closely allied
  races, and having banished them into forests or other desert places,
  it will arrest the progress of improvement in their faculties, while
  its own self, the ruler of the region over which it spreads, will
  increase in population without hindrance on the part of others, and,
  living in numerous tribes, will in succession create new needs which
  should stimulate industry and gradually render still more perfect
  its means and powers;

  "4. That, finally, this preëminent race having acquired an absolute
  supremacy over all the others, there arose between it and the
  highest animals a difference and indeed a considerable interval.

  "Thus the most perfect race of _Quadrumana_ will have been enabled
  to become dominant, to change its habits as the result of the
  absolute dominion which it will have assumed over the others, and
  with its new needs, by progressively acquiring modifications in its
  structure and its new and numerous powers, to keep within due limits
  the most highly developed of the other races in the state to which
  they had advanced, and to create between it and these last very
  remarkable distinctions.

  "The Angola orang (_Simia troglodytes_ Lin.) is the highest animal;
  it is much more perfect than the orang of the Indies (_Simia
  satyrus_ Lin.), which is called the orang-outang, and, nevertheless,
  as regards their structure they are both very inferior to man in
  bodily faculties and intelligence. These animals often stand erect;
  but this attitude is not habitual, their organization not having
  been sufficiently modified, so that standing still (_station_) is
  painful for them.

  "It is known, from the accounts of travellers, especially in regard
  to the orang of the Indies, that when immediate danger obliges it to
  fly, it immediately falls on all fours. This betrays, they tell us,
  the true origin of this animal, since it is obliged to abandon the
  alien unaccustomed partially erect attitude which is thrust upon it.

  "Without doubt this attitude is foreign to it, since in its change
  of locality it makes less use of it, which shows that its
  organization is less adapted to it; but though it has become easier
  for man to stand up straight, is the erect posture wholly natural to
  him?

  "Although man, who, by his habits, maintained in the individuals of
  his species during a great series of generations, can stand erect
  only while changing from one place to another, this attitude is not
  less in his case a condition of fatigue, during which he is able to
  maintain himself in an upright position only during a limited time
  and with the aid of the contraction of several of his muscles.

  "If the vertebral column of the human body should form the axis of
  this body, and sustain the head in equilibrium, as also the other
  parts, the man standing would be in a state of rest. But who does
  not know that this is not so; that the head is not articulated at
  its centre of gravity; that the chest and stomach, as also the
  viscera which these cavities contain, weigh heavily almost entirely
  on the anterior part of the vertebral column; that the latter rests
  on an oblique base, etc.? Also, as M. Richerand observes, there is
  needed in standing a force active and watching without ceasing to
  prevent the body from falling over, the weight and disposition of
  parts tending to make the body fall forward.

  "After having developed the considerations regarding the standing
  posture of man, the same savant then expresses himself: 'The
  relative weight of the head, of the thoracic and abdominal viscera,
  tends therefore to throw it in front of the line, according to which
  all the parts of the body bear down on the ground sustaining it; a
  line which should be exactly perpendicular to this ground in order
  that the standing position may be perfect. The following fact
  supports this assertion: I have observed that infants with a large
  head, the stomach protruding and the viscera loaded with fat,
  accustom themselves with difficulty to stand up straight, and it is
  not until the end of their second year that they dare to surrender
  themselves to their proper forces; they stand subject to frequent
  falls and have a natural tendency to revert to the quadrupedal
  state.' (_Physiologie_, vol. ii., p. 268.)

  "This disposition of the parts which cause the erect position of
  man, being a state of activity, and consequently fatiguing, instead
  of being a state of rest, would then betray in him an origin
  analogous to that of the mammals, if his organization alone should
  be taken into consideration.

  "Now in order to follow, in all its particulars, the hypothesis
  presented in the beginning of these observations, it is fitting to
  add the following considerations:

  "The individuals of the dominant race previously mentioned, having
  taken possession of all the inhabitable places which were suitable
  for them, and having to a very considerable extent multiplied their
  necessities in proportion as the societies which they formed became
  more numerous, were able equally to increase their ideas, and
  consequently to feel the need of communicating them to their
  fellows. We conceive that there would arise the necessity of
  increasing and of varying in the same proportion the _signs_ adopted
  for the communication of these ideas. It is then evident that the
  members of this race would have to make continual efforts, and to
  employ every possible means in these efforts, to create, multiply,
  and render sufficiently varied the _signs_ which their ideas and
  their numerous wants would render necessary.

  "It is not so with any other animals; because, although the most
  perfect among them, such as the _Quadrumana_, live mostly in troops,
  since the eminent supremacy of the race mentioned they have remained
  stationary as regards the improvement of their faculties, having
  been driven out from everywhere and banished to wild, desert,
  usually restricted regions, whither, miserable and restless, they
  are incessantly constrained to fly and hide themselves. In this
  situation these animals no longer contract new needs, they acquire
  no new ideas; they have but a small number of them, and it is always
  the same ones which occupy their attention, and among these ideas
  there are very few which they have need of communicating to the
  other individuals of their species. There are, then, only very few
  different _signs_ which they employ among their fellows, so that
  some movements of the body or of certain of its parts, certain
  hisses and cries raised by the simple inflexions of the voice,
  suffice them.

  "On the contrary, the individuals of the dominant race already
  mentioned, having had need of multiplying the _signs_ for the rapid
  communication of their ideas, now become more and more numerous,
  and, no longer contented either with pantomimic signs or possible
  inflexions of their voice to represent this multitude of signs now
  become necessary, would succeed by different efforts in forming
  _articulated sounds_: at first they would use only a small number,
  conjointly with the inflexions of their voice; as the result they
  would multiply, vary, and perfect them, according to their
  increasing necessities, and according as they would be more
  accustomed to produce them. Indeed, the habitual exercise of their
  throat, their tongue, and their lips to make articulate sounds, will
  have eminently developed in them this faculty.

  "Hence for this particular race the origin of the wonderful power of
  _speech_; and as the distance between the regions where the
  individuals composing it would be spread would favor the corruption
  of the signs fitted to express each idea, from this arose the origin
  of languages, which must be everywhere diversified.

  "Then in this respect necessities alone would have accomplished
  everything; they would give origin to efforts; and the organs fitted
  for the articulation of sounds would be developed by their habitual
  use.

  "Such would be the reflections which might be made if man,
  considered here as the preëminent race in question, were
  distinguished from the animals only by his physical characters, and
  if his origin were not different from theirs."

This is certainly, for the time it was written, an original,
comprehensive, and bold attempt at explaining in a tentative way, or at
least suggesting, the probable origin of man from some arboreal creature
allied to the apes. It is as regards the actual evolutional steps
supposed to have been taken by the simian ancestors of man, a more
detailed and comprehensive hypothesis than that offered by Darwin in his
_Descent of Man_,[197] which Lamarck has anticipated. Darwin does not
refer to this theory of Lamarck, and seems to have entirely overlooked
it, as have others since his time. The theory of the change from an
arboreal life and climbing posture to an erect one, and the
transformation of the hinder pair of hands into the feet of the erect
human animal, remind us of the very probable hypothesis of Mr. Herbert
Spencer, as to the modification of the quadrumanous posterior pair of
hands to form the plantigrade feet of man.


FOOTNOTES:

[195] Author's italics.

[196] "How much this unclean beast resembles man!"--_Ennius_.

"Indeed, besides other resemblances the monkey has mammæ, a clitoris,
nymphs, uterus, uvula, eye-lobes, nails, as in the human species; it
also lacks a suspensory ligament of the neck. Is it not astonishing that
man, endowed with wisdom, differs so little from such a disgusting
animal!"--_Linnæus_.

[197] Vol. i., chapter iv., pp. 135-151; ii., p. 372.




CHAPTER XIX

LAMARCK'S THOUGHTS ON MORALS, AND ON THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND
RELIGION


One who has read the writings of the great French naturalist, who may be
regarded as the founder of evolution, will readily realize that
Lamarck's mind was essentially philosophic, comprehensive, and
synthetic. He looked upon every problem in a large way. His breadth of
view, his moral and intellectual strength, his equably developed nature,
generous in its sympathies and aspiring in its tendencies, naturally led
him to take a conservative position as to the relations between science
and religion. He should, as may be inferred from his frequent references
to the Author of nature, be regarded as a deist.

When a very young man, he was for a time a friend of the erratic and
gifted Rousseau, and was afterwards not unknown to Condorcet, the
secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, so liberal in his views and
so bitter an enemy of the Church; and though constantly in contact with
the radical views and burning questions of that day, Lamarck throughout
his life preserved his philosophic calm, and maintained his lofty tone
and firm temper. We find no trace in his writings of sentiments other
than the most elevated and inspiring, and we know that in character he
was pure and sweet, self-sacrificing, self-denying, and free from
self-assertion.

The quotations from his _Philosophie zoologique_, published in 1809,
given below, will show what were the results of his meditations on the
relations between science and religion. Had his way of looking at this
subject prevailed, how much misunderstanding and ill-feeling between
theologians and savants would have been avoided! Had his spirit and
breadth of view animated both parties, there would not have been the
constant and needless opposition on the part of the Church to the grand
results of scientific discovery and philosophy, or too hasty dogmatism
and scepticism on the part of some scientists.

In Lamarck, at the opening of the past century, we behold the spectacle
of a man devoting over fifty years of his life to scientific research in
biology, and insisting on the doctrine of spontaneous generation; of the
immense length of geological time, so opposed to the views held by the
Church; the evolution of plants and animals from a single germ, and even
the origin of man from the apes, yet as earnestly claiming that nature
has its Author who in the beginning established the order of things,
giving the initial impulse to the laws of the universe.

As Duval says, after quoting the passage given below: "Deux faits son à
noter dans ce passage: d'une part, les termes dignes et conciliants dans
lesquels Lamarck établit la part de la science et de la religion; cela
vaut, mieux, même en tenant compte des différences d'epoques, que les
abjurations de Buffon."[198]

The passage quoted by M. Duval is the following one:

  "Surely nothing exists except by the will of the Sublime Author of
  all things. But can we not assign him laws in the execution of his
  will, and determine the method which he has followed in this
  respect? Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an order
  of things which has successively given existence to all that we see,
  as well as to that which exists and that of which we have no
  knowledge? As regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have
  confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature."[199]

In other places we find the following expressions:

  "There is then, for the animals as for the plants, an order which
  belongs to nature, and which results, as also the objects which this
  order makes exist, from the power which it has received from the
  SUPREME AUTHOR of all things. She is herself only the general and
  unchangeable order that this Sublime Author has created throughout,
  and only the totality of the general and special laws to which this
  order is subject. By these means, whose use it continues without
  change, it has given and will perpetually give existence to its
  productions; it varies and renews them unceasingly, and thus
  everywhere preserves the whole order which is the result of
  it."[200]

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "To regard nature as eternal, and consequently as having existed
  from all time, is to me an abstract idea, baseless, limitless,
  improbable, and not satisfactory to my reason. Being unable to know
  anything positive in this respect, and having no means of reasoning
  on this subject, I much prefer to think that _all nature_ is only a
  result: hence, I suppose, and I am glad to admit it, a first cause,
  in a word, a supreme power which has given existence to nature, and
  which has made it in all respects what it is."[201]

       ~       ~       ~       ~       ~

  "Nature, that immense totality of different beings and bodies, in
  every part of which exists an eternal circle of movements and
  changes regulated by law; totality alone unchangeable, so long as it
  pleases its SUBLIME AUTHOR to cause its existence, should be
  regarded as a whole constituted by its parts, for a purpose which
  its Author alone knows, and not exclusively for any one of them.

  "Each part is necessarily obliged to change, and to cease to be one
  in order to constitute another, with interests opposed to those of
  all; and if it has the power of reasoning it finds this whole
  imperfect. In reality, however, this whole is perfect and completely
  fulfils the end for which it was designed."[202]

Lamarck's work on general philosophy[203] was written near the end of
his life, in 1820. He begins his "Discours préliminaire" by referring to
the sudden loss of his eyesight, his work on the invertebrate animals
being thereby interrupted. The book was, he says, "rapidly" dictated to
his daughter, and the ease with which he dictated was due, he says, to
his long-continued habit of meditating on the facts he had observed.

In the "Principes primordiaux" he considers man as the only being who
has the power of observing nature, and the only one who has perceived
the necessity of recognizing a superior and only cause, creator of the
order of the wonders of the world of life. By this he is led to raise
his thoughts to the _Supreme Author_ of all that exists.

  "In the creation of his works, and especially those we can observe,
  this omnipotent Being has undoubtedly been the ruling power in
  pursuing the method which has pleased him, namely, his will has
  been:

  "Either to create instantaneously and separately every particular
  living being observed by us, to personally care for and watch over
  them in all their changes, their movements, or their actions, to
  unremittingly care for each one separately, and by the exercise of
  his supreme will to regulate all their life;

  "Or to reduce his creations to a small number, and among these, to
  institute an order of things general and continuous, pervaded by
  ceaseless activity (_mouvement_), especially subject to laws by
  means of which all the organisms of whatever nature, all the changes
  they undergo, all the peculiarities they present, and all the
  phenomena that many of them exhibit, may be produced.

  "In regard to these two modes of execution, if observation taught us
  nothing we could not form any opinion which would be well grounded.
  But it is not so; we distinctly see that there exists an order of
  things truly created (_véritablement créé_), as unchangeable as its
  author allows, acting on matter alone, and which possesses the power
  of producing all visible beings, of executing all the changes, all
  the modifications, even the extinctions, so also the renewals or
  recreations that we observe among them. It is to this order of
  things that we have given the name of _nature_. The Supreme Author
  of all that exists is, then, the immediate creator of matter as also
  of nature, but he is only indirectly the creator of what nature can
  produce.

  "The end that God has proposed to himself in creating matter, which
  forms the basis of all bodies, and nature, which divides (_divise_)
  this matter, forms the bodies, makes them vary, modifies them,
  changes them, and renews them in different ways, can be easily known
  to us; for the Supreme Being cannot meet with any obstacle to his
  will in the execution of his works; the general results of these
  works are necessarily the object he had in view. Thus this end could
  be no other than the existence of nature, of which matter alone
  forms the sphere, and should not be that causing the creation of any
  special being.

  "Do we find in the two objects created, _i.e._, _matter_ and
  _nature_, the source of the good and evil which have almost always
  been thought to exist in the events of this world? To this question
  I shall answer that good and evil are only relative to particular
  objects, that they never affect by their temporary existence the
  general result expected (_prévu_), and that for the end which the
  Creator designed, there is in reality neither good nor evil, because
  everything in nature perfectly fulfils its object.

  "Has God limited his creations to the existence of only matter and
  nature? This question is vain, and should remain without an answer
  on our part; because, being reduced to knowing anything only through
  observation, and to bodies alone, also to what concerns them, these
  being for us the only observable objects, it would be rash to speak
  affirmatively or negatively on this subject.

  "What is a spiritual being? It is what, with the aid of the
  imagination, one would naturally suppose (_l'on vaudra supposer_).
  Indeed, it is only by means of opposing that which is material that
  we can form the idea of spirit; but as this hypothetical being is
  not in the category of objects which it is possible for us to
  observe, we do not know how to take cognizance of it. The idea that
  we have of it is absolutely without base.

  "We only know physical objects and only objects relative to these
  beings (_êtres_): such is the condition of our nature. If our
  thoughts, our reasonings, our principles have been considered as
  metaphysical objects, these objects, then, are not beings (_êtres_).
  They are only relations or consequences of relations (_rapports_),
  or only results of observed laws.

  "We know that relations are distinguished as general and special.
  Among these last are regarded those of nature, form, dimension,
  solidity, size, quantity, resemblance, and difference; and if we add
  to these objects the being observed and the consideration of known
  laws, as also that of conventional objects, we shall have all the
  materials on which our thoughts are based.

  "Thus being able to observe only the phenomena of nature, as well as
  the laws which regulate these phenomena, also the products of these
  last, in a word, only bodies (_corps_) and what concerns them, all
  that which immediately proceeds from supreme power is
  incomprehensible to us, as it itself [_i.e._, supreme power] is to
  our minds. To create, or to make anything out of nothing, this is an
  idea we cannot conceive of, for the reason that in all that we can
  know, we do not find any model which represents it. GOD alone, then,
  can create, while nature can only produce. We must suppose that, in
  his creations, the Divinity is not restricted to the use of any
  time, while, on the other hand, nature can effect nothing without
  the aid of long periods of time."

Without translating more of this remarkable book, which is very rare,
much less known than the _Philosophie zoologique_, the spirit of the
remainder may be imagined from the foregoing extracts.

The author refers to the numerous evils resulting from ignorance, false
knowledge, lack of judgment, abuse of power, demonstrating the necessity
of our confining ourselves within the circle of the objects presented by
nature, and never to go beyond them if we do not wish to fall into
error, because the profound study of nature and of the organization of
man alone, and the exact observation of facts alone, will reveal to us
"the truths most important for us to know," in order to avoid the
vexations, the perfidies, the injustices, and the oppressions of all
sorts, and "incalculable disorders" which arise in the social body. In
this way only shall we discover and acquire the means of obtaining the
enjoyment of the advantages which we have a right to expect from our
state of civilization. The author endeavors to state what science can
and should render to society. He dwells on the sources from which man
has drawn the knowledge which he possesses, and from which he can obtain
many others--sources the totality of which constitutes for him the field
of realities.

Lamarck also in this work has built up a system for moral philosophy.

Self-love, he says, perfectly regulated, gives rise:

1. To moral force which characterizes the laborious man, so that the
length and difficulties of a useful work do not repel him.

2. To the courage of him who, knowing the danger, exposes himself when
he sees that this would be useful.

3. To love of wisdom.

Wisdom, according to Lamarck, consists in the observance of a certain
number of rules or virtues. These we cite in a slightly abridged form.

Love of truth in all things; the need of improving one's mind;
moderation in desires; decorum in all actions; a wise reserve in
unessential wants; indulgence, toleration, humanity, good will towards
all men; love of the public good and of all that is necessary to our
fellows; contempt for weakness; a kind of severity towards one's self
which preserves us from that multitude of artificial wants enslaving
those who give up to them; resignation and, if possible, moral
impassibility in suffering reverses, injustices, oppression, and losses;
respect for order, for public institutions, civil authorities, laws,
morality, and religion.

The practice of these maxims and virtues, says Lamarck, characterizes
true philosophy.

And it may be added that no one practised these virtues more than
Lamarck. Like Cuvier's, his life was blameless, and though he lived a
most retired life, and was not called upon to fill any public station
other than his chair of zoölogy at the Jardin des Plantes, we may feel
sure that he had the qualities of courage, independence, and patriotism
which would have rendered such a career most useful to his country.

As Bourguin eloquently asserts: "Lamarck was the brave man who never
deserted a dangerous post, the laborious man who never hesitated to meet
any difficulty, the investigating spirit, firm in his convictions,
tolerant of the opinions of others, the simple man, moderate in all
things, the enemy of weakness, devoted to the public good, imperturbable
under the attaints of fortune, of suffering, and of unjust and
passionate attacks."


FOOTNOTES:

[198] Mathias Duval: "Le transformiste français Lamarck," _Bulletin de
la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris_, xii., 1889, p. 345.

[199] _Philosophie zoologique_, p. 56.

[200] _Loc. cit._, i., p. 113.

[201] _Loc. cit._, i., p. 361.

[202] _Loc. cit._, ii., p. 465.

[203] _Système analytique des Connaissances de l'Homme_, etc.




CHAPTER XX

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LAMARCKISM AND DARWINISM; NEOLAMARCKISM


Since the appearance of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, and after the
great naturalist had converted the world to a belief in the general
doctrine of evolution, there has arisen in the minds of many working
naturalists a conviction that natural selection, or Darwinism as such,
is only one of other evolutionary factors; while there are some who
entirely reject the selective principle. Darwin, moreover, assumed a
tendency to fortuitous variation, and did not attempt to explain its
cause. Fully persuaded that he had discovered the most efficient and
practically sole cause of the origin of species, he carried the doctrine
to its extreme limits, and after over twenty years of observation and
experiment along this single line, pushing entirely aside the
Erasmus-Darwin and Lamarckian factors of change of environment, though
occasionally acknowledging the value of use and disuse, he triumphantly
broke over all opposition, and lived to see his doctrine generally
accepted. He had besides the support of some of the strongest men in
science: Wallace in a twin paper advocated the same views; Spencer,
Lyell, Huxley, Hooker, Haeckel, Bates, Semper, Wyman, Gray, Leidy, and
other representative men more or less endorsed Darwin's views, or at
least some form of evolution, and owing largely to their efforts in
scientific circles and in the popular press, the doctrine of descent
rapidly permeated every avenue of thought and became generally accepted.

Meanwhile, the general doctrine of evolution thus proved, and the
"survival of the fittest" an accomplished fact, the next step was to
ascertain "how," as Cope asked, "the fittest originated?" It was felt by
some that natural selection alone was not adequate to explain the first
steps in the origin of genera, families, orders, classes, and branches
or phyla. It was perceived by some that natural selection by itself was
not a _vera causa_, an efficient agent, but was passive, and rather
expressed the results of the operations of a series of factors. The
transforming should naturally precede the action of the selective
agencies.

We were, then, in our quest for the factors of organic evolution,
obliged to fall back on the action of the physico-chemical forces such
as light, or its absence, heat, cold, change of climate; and the
physiological agencies of food, or in other words on changes in the
physical environment, as well as in the biological environment. Lamarck
was the first one who, owing to his many years' training in systematic
botany and zoölogy, and his philosophic breadth, had stated more fully
and authoritatively than any one else the results of changes in the
action of the primary factors of evolution. Hence a return on the part
of many in Europe, and especially in America, to Lamarckism or its
modern form, Neolamarckism. Lamarck had already, so far as he could
without a knowledge of modern morphology, embryology, cytology, and
histology, suggested those fundamental principles of transformism on
which rests the selective principle.

Had his works been more accessible, or, where available, more carefully
read, and his views more fairly represented; had he been favored in his
lifetime by a single supporter, rather than been unjustly criticised by
Cuvier, science would have made more rapid progress, for it is an
axiomatic truth that the general acceptance of a working evolutionary
theory has given a vast impetus to biology.

We will now give a brief historical summary of the history of opinion
held by Lamarckians regarding the causes of the "origin of the fittest,"
the rise of variations, and the appearance of a population of plant and
animal forms sufficiently extensive and differentiated to allow for the
play of the competitive forces, and of the more passive selective
agencies which began to operate in pre-cambrian times, or as soon as the
earth became fitted for the existence of living beings.

The first writer after Lamarck to work along the lines he laid down was
Mr. Herbert Spencer. In 1866-71, in his epochal and remarkably
suggestive _Principles of Biology_, the doctrine of use and disuse is
implicated in his statements as to the effects of motion on structure in
general;[204] and in his theory as to the origin of the notochord, and
of the segmentation of the vertebral column and the segmental
arrangement of the muscles by muscular strains,[205] he laid the
foundations for future work along this line. He also drew attention in
the same work to the complementary development of parts, and likewise
instanced the decreased size of the jaws in the civilized races of
mankind, as a change not accounted for by the natural selection of
favorable variations.[206] In fact, this work is largely based on the
Lamarckian principles, as affording the basis for the action of natural
selection, and thirty years later we find him affirming: "The direct
action of the medium was the primordial factor of organic
evolution."[207] In his well-known essay on "The Inadequacy of Natural
Selection" (1893) the great philosopher, with his accustomed vigor and
force, criticises the arguments of those who rely too exclusively on
Darwinism alone, and especially Neodarwinism, as a sufficient factor to
account for the origin of special structures as well as species.

The first German author to appreciate the value of the Lamarckian
factors was that fertile and comprehensive philosopher and investigator
Ernst Haeckel, who also harmonized Lamarckism and Darwinism in these
words:

  "We should, on account of the grand proofs just enumerated, have to
  adopt Lamarck's Theory of Descent for the explanation of biological
  phenomena, even if we did not possess Darwin's Theory of Selection.
  The one is so completely and _directly proved_ by the other, and
  established by mechanical causes, that there remains nothing to be
  desired. The laws of _Inheritance_ and _Adaptation_ are universally
  acknowledged physiological facts, the former traceable to
  propagation, the latter to the _nutrition_ of organisms. On the
  other hand, the _struggle for existence_ is a _biological_ fact,
  which with mathematical necessity follows from the general
  disproportion between the average number of organic individuals and
  the numerical excess of their germs."[208]

A number of American naturalists at about the same date, as the result
of studies in different directions, unbiassed by a too firm belief in
the efficacy of natural selection, and relying on the inductive method
alone, worked away at the evidence in favor of the primary factors of
evolution along Lamarckian lines, though quite independently, for at
first neither Hyatt nor Cope had read Lamarck's writings.

In 1866 Professor A. Hyatt published the first of a series of classic
memoirs on the genetic relations of the fossil cephalopods. His labors,
so rich in results, have now been carried on for forty years, and are
supplemented by careful, prolonged work on the sponges, on the tertiary
shells of Steinheim, and on the land shells of the Hawaiian Islands.

His first paper was on the parallelism between the different stages of
life in the individual and those of the ammonites, carrying out
D'Orbigny's discovery of embryonic, youthful, adult, and old-age stages
in ammonites,[209] and showing that these forms are due to an
acceleration of growth in the mature forms, and a retardation in the
senile forms.

In a memoir on the "Biological Relations of the Jurassic
Ammonites,"[210] he assigns the causes of the progressive changes in
these forms, the origination of new genera, and the production of young,
mature, and senile forms to "the favorable nature of the physical
surroundings, primarily producing characteristic changes which become
perpetuated and increased by inheritance within the group."

The study of the modifications of the tertiary forms of Planorbis at
Steinheim, begun by Hilgendorf, led among others (nine in all) to the
following conclusions:

  "First, that the unsymmetrical spiral forms of the shells of these
  and of all the Mollusca probably resulted from the action of the
  laws of heredity, modified by gravitation.

  "Second, that there are many characteristics in these shells and in
  other groups, which are due solely to the uniform action of the
  physical influence of the immediate surroundings, varying with every
  change of locality, but constant and uniform within each locality.

  "Third, that the Darwinian law of Natural Selection does not explain
  these relations, but applies only to the first stages in the
  establishment of the differences between forms or species in the
  same locality. That its office is to fix these in the organization
  and bring them within the reach of the laws of heredity."

These views we find reiterated in his later palæontological papers.
Hyatt's views on acceleration were adopted by Neumayr.[211] Waagen,[212]
from his studies on the Jurassic cephalopods, concludes that the factors
in the evolution of these forms were changes in external conditions,
geographical isolation, competition, and that the fundamental law was
not that of Darwin, but "the law of development." Hyatt has also shown
that at first evolution was rapid. "The evolution is a purely mechanical
problem in which the action of the habitat is the working agent of all
the major changes; first acting upon the adult stages, as a rule, and
then through heredity upon the earlier stages in successive
generations." He also shows that as the primitive forms migrated and
occupied new, before barren, areas, where they met with new conditions,
the organisms "changed their habits and structures rapidly to accord
with these new conditions."[213]

While the palæontological facts afford complete and abundant proofs of
the modifying action of changes in the environment, Hyatt, in 1877, from
his studies on sponges,[214] shows that the origin of their endless
forms "can only be explained by the action of physical surroundings
directly working upon the organization and producing by such direct
action the modifications or common variations above described."

Mr. A. Agassiz remarks that the effect of the nature of the bottom of
the sea on sponges and rhizopods "is an all-important factor in
modifying the organism."[215]

While Hyatt's studies were chiefly on the ammonites, molluscs, and
existing sponges, Cope was meanwhile at work on the batrachians. His
_Origin of Genera_ appeared shortly after Hyatt's first paper, but in
the same year (1866). This was followed by a series of remarkably
suggestive essays based on his extensive palæontological work, which are
in part reprinted in his _Origin of the Fittest_ (1887); while in his
epoch-making book, _The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_ (1896), we
have in a condensed shape a clear exposition of some of the Lamarckian
factors in their modern Neolamarckian form.

In the Introduction, p. 9, he remarks:

  "In these papers by Professor Hyatt and myself is found the first
  attempt to show by concrete examples of natural taxonomy that the
  variations that result in evolution are not multifarious or
  promiscuous, but definite and direct, contrary to the method which
  seeks no origin for variations other than natural selection. In
  other words, these publications constitute the first essays in
  systematic evolution that appeared. By the discovery of the
  paleontologic succession of modifications of the articulations of
  the vertebrate, and especially mammalian, skeleton, I first
  furnished an actual demonstration of the reality of the Lamarckian
  factor of use, or motion, as friction, impact, and strain, as an
  efficient cause of evolution."[216]

The discussion in Cope's work of kinetogenesis, or of the effects of use
and disuse, affords an extensive series of facts in support of these
factors of Lamarck's. As these two books are accessible to every one, we
need only refer the reader to them as storehouses of facts bearing on
Neolamarckism.

The present writer, from a study of the development and anatomy of
Limulus and of Arthropod ancestry, was early (1870)[217] led to adopt
Lamarckian views in preference to the theory of Natural Selection, which
never seemed to him adequate or sufficiently comprehensive to explain
the origin of variations.

In the following year,[218] from a study of the insects and other
animals of Mammoth Cave, we claimed that "the characters separating the
genera and species of animals are those inherited from adults, modified
by their physical surroundings and adaptations to changing conditions of
life, inducing certain alterations in parts which have been transmitted
with more or less rapidity, and become finally fixed and habitual."

In an essay entitled "The Ancestry of Insects"[219] (1873) we adopted
the Lamarckian factors of change of habits and environment, of use and
disuse, to account for the origin of the appendages, while we attributed
the origin of the metamorphoses of insects to change of habits or of the
temperature of the seasons and of climates, particularly the change in
the earth's climates from the earlier ages of the globe, "when the
temperature of the earth was nearly the same the world over, to the
times of the present distribution of heat and cold in zones."

From further studies on cave animals, published in 1877,[220] we wrote
as follows:

  "In the production of these cave species, the exceptional phenomena
  of darkness, want of sufficient food, and unvarying temperature,
  have been plainly enough _veræ causæ_. To say that the principle of
  natural selection accounts for the change of structure is no
  explanation of the phenomena; the phrase has to the mind of the
  writer no meaning in connection with the production of these cave
  forms, and has as little meaning in accounting for the origination
  of species and genera in general. Darwin's phrase 'natural
  selection,' or Herbert Spencer's term 'survival of the fittest,'
  expresses simply the final result, while the process of the
  origination of the new forms which have survived, or been selected
  by nature, is to be explained by the action of the physical
  environments of the animals coupled with inheritance-force. It has
  always appeared to the writer that the phrases quoted above have
  been misused to state the cause, when they simply express the result
  of the action of a chain of causes which we may, with Herbert
  Spencer, call the 'environment' of the organism undergoing
  modification; and thus a form of Lamarckianism, greatly modified by
  recent scientific discoveries, seems to meet most of the
  difficulties which arise in accounting for the origination of
  species and higher groups of organisms. Certainly 'natural
  selection' or the 'survival of the fittest' is not a _vera causa_,
  though the 'struggle for existence' may show us the causes which
  have led to the _preservation_ of species, while changes in the
  environment of the organism may satisfactorily account for the
  original tendency to variation assumed by Mr. Darwin as the
  starting-point where natural selection begins to act."

In our work on _The Cave Animals of North America_,[221] after stating
that Darwin in his _Origin of Species_ attributed the loss of eyes
"wholly to disuse," remarking (p. 142) that after the more or less
perfect obliteration of the eyes, "natural selection will often have
effected other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennæ
or palpi, as a compensation for blindness," we then summed up as follows
the causes of the production of cave faunæ in general:

  "1. Change in environment from light, even partial, to twilight or
  total darkness, and involving diminution of food, and compensation
  for the loss of certain organs by the hypertrophy of others.

  "2. Disuse of certain organs.

  "3. Adaptation, enabling the more plastic forms to survive and
  perpetuate their stock.

  "4. Isolation, preventing intercrossing with out-of-door forms,
  thus insuring the permanency of the new varieties, species, or
  genera.

  "5. Heredity, operating to secure for the future the permanence of
  the newly originated forms as long as the physical conditions remain
  the same.

  "Natural selection perhaps expresses the total result of the working
  of these five factors rather than being an efficient cause in
  itself, or at least constitutes the last term in a series of causes.
  Hence Lamarckism in a modern form, or as we have termed it,
  Neolamarckism, seems to us to be nearer the truth than Darwinism
  proper or natural selection."[222]

In an attempt to apply Lamarck's principle of the origin of the spines
and horns of caterpillars and other insects as well as other animals to
the result of external stimuli,[223] we had not then read what he says
on the subject. (See p. 316.) Having, however, been led to examine into
the matter, from the views held by recent observers, especially Henslow,
and it appearing that Lamarck was substantially correct in supposing
that the blood (his "fluids") would flow to parts on the exposed
portions of the body and thus cause the origin of horns, on the
principle of the saying, "_ubi irritatio, ibi affluxus_," we came to the
following conclusions:

  "The Lamarckian factors (1) change (both direct and indirect) in the
  _milieu_, (2) need, and (3) habit, and the now generally adopted
  principle that a change of function induces change in organs,[224]
  and in some or many cases actually induces the hypertrophy and
  specialization of what otherwise would be indifferent parts or
  organs;--these factors are all-important in the evolution of the
  colors, ornaments, and outgrowths from the cuticle of caterpillars."

Our present views as to the relations between the Lamarckian factors and
the Darwinian one of natural selection are shown by the following
summary at the end of this essay.

  "1. The more prominent tubercles, and spines or bristles arising
  from them, are hypertrophied piliferous warts, the warts, with the
  seta or hair which they bear, being common to all caterpillars.

  "2. The hypertrophy or enlargement was probably [we should rather
  say _possibly_] primarily due to a change of station from herbs to
  trees, involving better air, a more equable temperature, perhaps a
  different and better food.

  "3. The enlarged and specialized tubercles developed more rapidly on
  certain segments than on others, especially the more prominent
  segments, because the nutritive fluids would tend more freely to
  supply parts most exposed to external stimuli.

  "4. The stimuli were in great part due to the visits of insects and
  birds, resulting in a mimicry of the spines and projections on the
  trees; the colors (lines and spots) were due to light or shade,
  with the general result of protective mimicry, or adaptation to
  tree-life.

  "5. As the result of some unknown factor some of the hypodermic
  cells at the base of the spines became in certain forms specialized
  so as to secrete a poisonous fluid.

  "6. After such primitive forms, members of different families, had
  become established on trees, a process of arboreal segregation or
  isolation would set in, and intercrossing with low-feeders would
  cease.

  "7. Heredity, or the unknown factors of which heredity is the
  result, would go on uninterruptedly, the result being a succession
  of generations perfectly adapted to arboreal life.

  "8. Finally the conservative agency of natural selection operates
  constantly, tending towards the preservation of the new varieties,
  species, and genera, and would not cease to act, in a given
  direction, so long as the environment remained the same.

  "9. Thus in order to account for the origin of a species, genus,
  family, order, or even a class, the first steps, causing the
  origination of variations, were in the beginning due to the primary
  (direct and indirect) factors of evolution (Neolamarckism), and the
  final stages were due to the secondary factors, segregation and
  natural selection (Darwinism)."

From a late essay[225] we take the following extracts explaining our
views:

  "In seeking to explain the causes of a metamorphosis in animals, one
  is compelled to go back to the primary factors of organic
  evolution, such as the change of environment, whether the factors be
  cosmical (gravity), physical changes in temperature, effects of
  increased or diminished light and shade, under- or over-nutrition,
  and the changes resulting from the presence or absence of enemies,
  or from isolation. The action of these factors, whether direct or
  indirect, is obvious, when we try to explain the origin or causes of
  the more marked metamorphoses of animals. Then come in the other
  Lamarckian factors of use and disuse, new needs resulting in new
  modes of life, habits, or functions, which bring about the
  origination, development, and perfection of new organs, as in new
  species and genera, etc., or which in metamorphic forms may result
  in a greater increase in the number of, and an exaggeration of the
  features characterizing the stages of larval life.


  "VI. _The Adequacy of Neolamarckism_.

  "It is not to be denied that in many instances all through the
  ceaseless operation of these fundamental factors there is going on a
  process of sifting or of selection of forms best adapted to their
  surroundings, and best fitted to survive, but this factor, though
  important, is quite subordinate to the initial causes of variation,
  and of metamorphic changes.

  "Neolamarckism,[226] as we understand this doctrine, has for its
  foundation a combination of the factors suggested by the Buffon and
  Geoffroy St. Hilaire school, which insisted on the direct action of
  the _milieu_, and of Lamarck, who relied both on the direct (plants
  and lowest animals) and on the indirect action of the environment,
  adding the important factors of need and of change of habits
  resulting either in the atrophy or in the development of organs by
  disuse or use, with the addition of the hereditary transmission of
  characters acquired in the lifetime of the individual.

  "Lamarck's views, owing to the early date of his work, which was
  published in 1809, before the foundation of the sciences of
  embryology, cytology, palæontology, zoögeography, and in short all
  that distinguishes modern biology, were necessarily somewhat crude,
  though the fundamental factors he suggested are those still invoked
  by all thinkers of Lamarckian tendencies.

  "Neolamarckism gathers up and makes use of the factors both of the
  St. Hilaire and Lamarckian schools, as containing the more
  fundamental causes of variation, and adds those of geographical
  isolation or segregation (Wagner and Gulick), the effects of
  gravity, the effects of currents of air and of water, of fixed or
  sedentary as opposed to active modes of life, the results of strains
  and impacts (Ryder, Cope, and Osborn), the principle of change of
  function as inducing the formation of new structures (Dohrn), the
  effects of parasitism, commensalism, and of symbiosis--in short, the
  biological environment; together with geological extinction, natural
  and sexual selection, and hybridity.

  "It is to be observed that the Neolamarckian in relying mainly on
  these factors does not overlook the value of natural selection as a
  guiding principle, and which began to act as soon as the world
  became stocked with the initial forms of life, but he simply seeks
  to assign this principle to its proper position in the hierarchy of
  factors.

  "Natural selection, as the writer from the first has insisted, is
  not a _vera causa_, an initial or impelling cause in the origination
  of new species and genera. It does not start the ball in motion; it
  only, so to speak, guides its movements down this or that incline.
  It is the expression, like that of "the survival of the fittest" of
  Herbert Spencer, of the results of the combined operation of the
  more fundamental factors. In certain cases we cannot see any room
  for its action; in some others we cannot at present explain the
  origin of species in any other way. Its action increased in
  proportion as the world became more and more crowded with diverse
  forms, and when the struggle for existence had become more unceasing
  and intense. It certainly cannot account for the origination of the
  different branches, classes, or orders of organized beings. It in
  the main simply corresponds to artificial selection; in the latter
  case, man selects forms already produced by domestication, the
  latter affording sports and varieties due to change in the
  surroundings, that is, soil, climate, food, and other physical
  features, as well as education.

  "In the case also of heredity, which began to operate as soon as the
  earliest life forms appeared, we have at the outset to invoke the
  principle of the heredity of characters acquired during the lifetime
  of lowest organisms.

  "Finally, it is noticeable that when one is overmastered by the
  dogma of natural selection he is apt, perhaps unconsciously, to give
  up all effort to work out the factors of evolution, or to seek to
  work out this or that cause of variation. Trusting too implicitly to
  the supposed _vera causa_, one may close his eyes to the effects of
  change of environment or to the necessity of constant attempts to
  discover the real cause of this or that variation, the reduction or
  increase in size of this or that organ; or become insensible to the
  value of experiments. Were the dogma of natural selection to become
  universally accepted, further progress would cease, and biology
  would tend to relapse into a stage of atrophy and degeneration. On
  the other hand, a revival of Lamarckism in its modern form, and a
  critical and doubting attitude towards natural selection as an
  efficient cause, will keep alive discussion and investigation, and
  especially, if resort be had to experimentation, will carry up to a
  higher plane the status of philosophical biology."

Although now the leader of the Neodarwinians, and fully assured of the
"all-sufficiency" of natural selection, the veteran biologist Weismann,
whose earlier works were such epoch-making contributions to insect
embryology, was, when active as an investigator, a strong advocate of
the Lamarckian factors. In his masterly work, _Studies in the Theory of
Descent_[227] (1875), although accepting Darwin's principle of natural
selection, he also relied on "the transforming influence of direct
action as upheld by Lamarck," although he adds, "its extent cannot as
yet be estimated with any certainty." He concluded from his studies in
seasonal dimorphism, "that differences of specific value can originate
through the direct action of external conditions of life only." While
conceding that sexual selection plays a very important part in the
markings and coloring of butterflies, he adds "that a change produced
directly by climate may be still further increased by sexual selection."
He also inquired into the origin of variability, and held that it can be
elucidated by seasonal dimorphism. He thus formulated the chief results
of his investigations: "A species is only caused to change through the
influence of changing external conditions of life, this change being in
a fixed direction which entirely depends on the physical nature of the
varying organism, and is different in different species or even in the
two sexes of the same species."

The influence of changes of climate on variation has been studied to
especial advantage in North America, owing to its great extent, and to
the fact that its territory ranges from the polar to the tropical
regions, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. As respects
climatic variation in birds, Professor Baird first took up the inquiry,
which was greatly extended, with especial relation to the formation of
local varieties, by Dr. J. A. Allen,[228] who was the first to ascertain
by careful measurements, and by a study of the difference in plumage and
pelage of individuals inhabiting distant portions of a common habitat,
the variations due to climatic and local causes.

"That varieties," he says, "may and do arise by the action of climatic
influences, and pass on to become species; and that species become, in
like manner, differentiated into genera, is abundantly indicated by the
facts of geographical distribution, and the obvious relation of local
forms to the conditions of environment. The present more or less
unstable condition of the circumstances surrounding organic beings,
together with the known mutations of climate our planet has undergone in
past geological ages, point clearly to the agency of physical conditions
as one of the chief factors in the evolution of new forms of life. So
long as the environing conditions remain stable, just so long will
permanency of character be maintained; but let changes occur, however
gradual or minute, and differentiations begin." He inclines to regard
the modifications as due rather to the direct action of the conditions
of environment than to "the round-about process of natural selection."
He also admits that change of habits and food, use and disuse, are
factors.

The same kind of inquiry, though on far less complete data, was extended
by the present writer[229] in 1873 to the moths, careful measurements of
twenty-five species of geometrid moths common to the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts of North America showing that there is an increase in
size and variation in shape of the wings, and in some cases in color, in
the Pacific Coast over Eastern or Atlantic Coast individuals of the same
species, the differences being attributed to the action of climatic
causes. The same law holds good in the few Notodontian moths common to
both sides of our continent. Similar studies, the results depending on
careful measurements of many individuals, have recently been made by
C. H. Eigenmann (1895-96), W. J. Moenkhaus (1896), and H. C. Bumpus
(1896-98).

The discoveries of Owen, Gaudry, Huxley, Kowalevsky, Cope, Marsh,
Filhol, Osborn, Scott, Wortmann, and many others, abundantly prove that
the lines of vertebrate descent must have been the result of the action
of the primary factors of organic evolution, including the principles of
migration, isolation, and competition; the selective principle being
secondary and preservative rather than originative.

Important contributions to dynamic evolution or kinetogenesis are the
essays of Cope, Ryder, Dall, Osborn, Jackson, Scott, and Wortmann.

Ryder began in 1877 to publish a series of remarkably suggestive essays
on the "mechanical genesis," through strains, of the vertebrate limbs
and teeth, including the causes of the reduction of digits. In
discussing the origin of the great development of the incisor teeth of
rodents, he suggested that "the more severe strains to which they were
subjected by enforced or intelligently assumed changes of habit, were
the initiatory agents in causing them to assume their present forms,
such forms as were best adapted to resist the greatest strains without
breaking."[230]

He afterwards[231] claimed that the articulations of the cartilaginous
fin-rays of the trout (_Salmo fontinalis_) are due to the mechanical
strains experienced by the rays in use as motors of the body of the fish
in the water.

In the line of inquiry opened up by Cope and by Ryder are the essays of
Osborn[232] on the mechanical causes for the displacement of the
elements of the feet in the mammals, and the phylogeny of the teeth.
Also Professor W. B. Scott thus expresses the results of his
studies:[233]

  "To sum up the results of our examination of certain series of
  fossil mammals, one sees clearly that transformation, whether in the
  way of the addition of new parts or the reduction of those already
  present, acts just _as if_ the direct action of the environment and
  the habits of the animal were the efficient cause of the change, and
  any explanation which excludes the direct action of such agencies is
  confronted by the difficulty of an immense number of the most
  striking coincidences.... So far as I can see, the theory of
  determinate variations and of use-inheritance is not antagonistic
  but supplementary to natural selection, the latter theory attempting
  no explanation of the _causes_ of variation. Nor is it pretended for
  a moment that use and disuse are the sole or even the chief factors
  in variation."

As early as 1868 the Lamarckian factor of isolation, due to migration
into new regions, was greatly extended, and shown by Moritz Wagner[234]
to be a most important agent in the limitation and fixation of varieties
and species.

  "Darwin's work," he says, "neither satisfactorily explains the
  external cause which gives the first impulse to increased individual
  variability, and consequently to natural selection, nor that
  condition which, in connection with a certain advantage in the
  struggle for life, renders the new characteristics indispensable.
  The latter is, according to my conviction, solely fulfilled by the
  voluntary or passive migration of organisms and colonization, which
  depends in a great measure upon the configuration of the country; so
  that only under favorable conditions would the home of a new species
  be founded."

This was succeeded by Rev. J. T. Gulick's profound essays "On Diversity
of Evolution under One Set of External Conditions"[235] (1872), and on
"Divergent Evolution through Cumulative Segregation"[236] (1887).

These and later papers are based on his studies on the land shells of
the Hawaiian Islands. The cause of their extreme diversity of local
species is, he claims, not due to climatic conditions, food, enemies, or
to natural selection, but to the action of what he calls the "law of
segregation."

Fifteen years later Mr. Romanes published his theory of physiological
selection, which covered much the same ground.

A very strong little book by an ornithologist of wide experience,
Charles Dixon,[237] and refreshing to read, since it is packed with
facts, is Lamarckian throughout. The chief factor in the formation of
local species is, he thinks, isolation; the others are climatic
influences (especially the glacial period), use and disuse, and sexual
selection as well as chemical agency. Dixon insists on the "vast
importance of isolation in the modification of many forms of life,
without the assistance of natural selection." Again he says: "Natural
selection, as has often been remarked, can only preserve a beneficial
variation--it cannot originate it, it is not a cause of variation; on
the other hand, the use or disuse of organs is a direct cause of
variation, and can furnish natural selection with abundance of material
to work upon" (p. 49). The book, like the papers of Allen, Ridgway,
Gulick, and others, shows the value of isolation or segregation in
special areas as a factor in the origination of varieties and species,
the result being the prevention of interbreeding, which would otherwise
swamp the incipient varieties.

Here might be cited Delboeuf's law:[238]

  "When a modification is produced in a very small number of
  individuals, this modification, even were it advantageous, would be
  destroyed by heredity, as the favored individuals would be obliged
  to unite with the unmodified individuals. _Il n'en est rien,
  cependant._ However great may be the number of forms similar to it,
  and however small may be the number of dissimilar individuals which
  would give rise to an isolated individual, we can always, while
  admitting that the different generations are propagated under the
  same conditions, meet with a number of generations at the end of
  which the sum total of the modified individuals will surpass that of
  the unmodified individuals." Giard adds that this law is capable of
  mathematical demonstration. "Thus the continuity or even the
  periodicity of action of a primary factor, such, for example, as a
  variation of the _milieu_, shows us the necessary and sufficient
  condition under which a variety or species originates without the
  aid of any secondary factor."

Semper,[239] an eminent zoölogist and morphologist, who also was the
first (in 1863) to criticise Darwin's theory of the mode of formation of
coral atolls, though not referring to Lamarck, published a strong,
catholic, and original book, which is in general essentially Lamarckian,
while not undervaluing Darwin's principle of natural selection. "It
appears to me," he says, in the preface, "that of all the properties of
the animal organism, Variability is that which may first and most easily
be traced by exact investigation to its efficient causes."

  "By a rearrangement of the materials of his argument, however, we
  obtain, as I conceive, convincing proof that external conditions can
  exert not only a very powerful selective force, but a transforming
  one as well, although it must be the more limited of the two.

  "An organ no longer needed for its original purpose may adapt itself
  to the altered circumstances, and alter correspondingly if it
  contains within itself, as I have explained above, the elements of
  such a change. Then the influence exerted by the changed conditions
  will be _transforming_, not _selective_.

  "This last view may seem somewhat bold to those readers who know
  that Darwin, in his theory of selection, has almost entirely set
  aside the direct transforming influence of external circumstances.
  Yet he seems latterly to be disposed to admit that he had
  undervalued the transforming as well as the selective influence of
  external conditions; and it seems to me that his objection to the
  idea of such an influence rested essentially on the method of his
  argument, which seemed indispensable for setting his theory of
  selection and his hypothesis as to the transformation of species in
  a clear light and on a firm footing" (p. 37).

Dr. H. de Varigny has carried on much farther the kind of experiments
begun by Semper. In his _Experimental Evolution_ he employs the
Lamarckian factors of environment and use and disuse, regarding the
selective factors as secondary.

The Lamarckian factors are also depended upon by the late Professor
Eimer in his works on the variation of the wall-lizard and on the
markings of birds and mammals (1881-88), his final views being comprised
in his general work.[240] The essence of his point of view may be seen
by the following quotation:

  "According to my conception, the physical and chemical changes which
  organisms experience during life through the action of the
  environment, through light or want of light, air, warmth, cold,
  water, moisture, food, etc., and which they transmit by heredity,
  are the primary elements in the production of the manifold variety
  of the organic world, and in the origin of species. From the
  materials thus supplied the struggle for existence makes its
  selection. These changes, however, express themselves simply as
  growth" (p. 22).

In a later paper[241] Eimer proposes the term "orthogenesis," or direct
development, in rigorous conformity to law, in a few definite
directions. Although this is simply and wholly Lamarckism, Eimer claims
that it is not, "for," he strangely enough says, "Lamarck ascribed no
efficiency whatever to the effects of outward influences on the animal
body, and very little to their effects upon vegetable organisms."
Whereas if he had read his Lamarck carefully, he would have seen that
the French evolutionist distinctly states that the environment acts
directly on plants and the lower animals, but indirectly on those
animals with a brain, meaning the higher vertebrates. The same
anti-selection views are held by Eimer's pupil, Piepers,[242] who
explains organic evolution by "laws of growth, ... uncontrolled by any
process of selection."

Dr. Cunningham likewise, in the preface to his translation of Eimer's
work, gives his reasons for adopting Neolamarckian views, concluding
that "the theory of selection can never get over the difficulty of the
origin of entirely new characters;" that "selection, whether natural or
artificial, could not be the essential cause of the evolution of
organisms." In an article on "The New Darwinism" (_Westminster Review_,
July, 1891) he claims that Weismann's theory of heredity does not
explain the origin of horns, venomous teeth, feathers, wings of insects,
or mammary glands, phosphorescent organs, etc., which have arisen on
animals whose ancestors never had anything similar.

Discussing the origin of whales and other aquatic mammals, W. Kükenthal
suggests that the modifications are partially attributable to mechanical
principles. (_Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist._, February, 1891.)

From his studies on the variation of butterflies, Karl Jordan[243]
proposes the term "mechanical selection" to account for them, but he
points out that this factor can only work on variations produced by
other factors. Certain cases, as the similar variation in the same
locality of two species of different families, but with the same wing
pattern, tell in favor of the direct action of the local surroundings on
the markings of the wings.

In the same direction are the essays of Schroeder[244] on the markings
of caterpillars, which he ascribes to the colors of the surroundings; of
Fischer[245] on the transmutations of butterflies as the result of
changes of temperature, and also Dormeister's[246] earlier paper.
Steinach[247] attributes the color of the lower vertebrates to the
direct influence of the light on the pigment cells, as does
Biedermann.[248]

In his address on evolution and the factors of evolution, Professor A.
Giard[249] has given due credit to Lamarck as "the creator of
transformism," and to the position to be assigned to natural selection
as a secondary factor. He quotes at length Lamarck's views published in
1806. After enumerating the primary factors of organic evolution, he
places natural selection among his secondary factors, such as heredity,
segregation, amixia, etc. On the other hand, he states that Lamarck was
not happy in the choice of the examples which he gave to explain the
action of habits and use of parts. "Je ne rappellerai par l'histoire
tant de fois critique du cou de la giraffe et des cornes de l'escargot."

Another important factor in the evolution of the metazoa or many-celled
animals, from the sponges and polyps upward from the one-celled forms or
protozoa, is the principle of animal aggregation or colonization
advanced by Professor Perrier. As civilization and progressive
intelligence in mankind arose from the aggregation of men into tribes or
peoples which lived a sedentary life, so the agricultural, building, and
other arts forthwith sprang up; and as the social insects owe their
higher degree of intelligence to their colonial mode of life, so as soon
as unicellular organisms began to become fixed, and form aggregates, the
sponge and polyp types of organization resulted, this leading to the
gastræa, or ancestral form from which all the higher phyla may have
originated.

M. Perrier appears to fully accept Lamarck's views, including his
speculations as to wants, and use and disuse. He, however, refuses to
accept Lamarck's extreme view as to the origin through effort of
entirely new organs. As he says: "Unfortunately, if Lamarck succeeded in
explaining in a plausible way the modification of organs already
existing, their adaptation to different uses, or even their
disappearance from disuse, in regard to the appearance of new organs he
made hypotheses so venturesome that they led to the momentary
forgetfulness of his other forceful conceptions."[250]

The popular idea of Lamarckism, and which from the first has been
prejudicial to his views, is that an animal may acquire an organ by
simply wishing for or desiring it, or, as his French critics put it, "Un
animal finit toujours par posséder un organe quand il le veut." "Such,"
says Perrier,[251] "is not the idea of Lamarck, who simply attributes
the transformations of species to the stimulating action of external
conditions, construing it under the expression of wants (_besoins_), and
explaining by that word what we now call _adaptations_. Thus the long
neck of the giraffe results from the fact that the animal inhabits a
country where the foliage is situated at the tops of high trees; the
long legs of the wading birds have originated from the fact that these
birds are obliged to seek their food in the water without wetting
themselves," etc. (See p. 350.)

  "Many cases," says Perrier, "may be added to-day to those which
  Lamarck has cited to support his first law [pp. 303, 346]; the only
  point which is open to discussion is the extent of the changes which
  an organ may undergo, through the use it is put to by the animal. It
  is a simple question of measurement. The possibility of the creation
  of an organ in consequence of external stimuli is itself a matter
  which deserves to be studied, and which we have no right to reject
  without investigation, without observations, or to treat as a
  ridiculous dream; Lamarck would doubtless have made it more readily
  accepted, if he had not thought it well to pass over the
  intermediate steps by means of wants. It is incontestable that by
  lack of exercise organs atrophy and disappear."

  Finally, says Perrier: "Without doubt the real mechanism of the
  improvement (_perfectionnement_) of organisms has escaped him
  [Lamarck], but neither has Darwin explained it. The law of natural
  selection is not the indication of a process of transformation of
  animals; it is the expression of the total results. It states these
  results without showing us how they have been brought about. We
  indeed see that it tends to the preservation of the most perfect
  organisms; but Darwin does not show us how the organisms themselves
  originated. This is a void which we have only during these later
  years tried to fill" (p. 90).

Dr. J. A. Jeffries, author of an essay "On the Epidermal System of
Birds," in a later paper[252] thus frankly expresses his views as to the
relations of natural selection to the Lamarckian factors. Referring to
Darwin's case of the leg bones of domestic ducks compared with those of
wild ducks, and the atrophy of disused organs, he adds:

  "In this case, as with most of Lamarck's laws, Darwin has taken them
  to himself wherever natural selection, sexual selection, and the
  like have fallen to the ground.

  "Darwin's natural selection does not depend, as is popularly
  supposed, on direct proof, but is adduced as an hypothesis which
  gains its strength from being compatible with so many facts of
  correlation between an organism and its surroundings. Yet the same
  writer who considers natural selection proved will call for positive
  experimental proof of Lamarck's theory, and refuse to accept its
  general compatibility with the facts as support. Almost any case
  where natural selection is held to act by virtue of advantage gained
  by use of a part is equally compatible with Lamarck's theory of use
  and development. The wings of birds of great power of flight, the
  relations of insects to flowers, the claws of beasts of prey, are
  all cases in point."

Professor J. A. Thomson's useful _Synthetic Summary of the Influence of
the Environment upon the Organism_ (1887) takes for its text Spencer's
aphorism, that the direct action of the medium was the primordial factor
of organic evolution. Professor Geddes relies on the changes in the soil
and climate to account for the origin of spines in plants.

The botanist Sachs, in his _Physiology of Plants_ (1887), remarks: "A
far greater portion of the phenomena of life are [is] called forth by
external influences than one formerly ventured to assume."

Certain botanists are now strong in the belief that the species of
plants have originated through the direct influence of the environment.
Of these the most outspoken is the Rev. Professor G. Henslow. His view
is that self-adaptation, by response to the definite action of changed
conditions of life, is the true origin of species. In 1894[253] he
insisted, "_in the strictest sense of the term_, that natural selection
is not wanted as an 'aid' or a 'means' in originating species." In a
later paper[254] he reasserts that all variations are definite, that
there are no indefinite variations, and that natural selection "can take
no part in the origination of varieties." He quotes with approval the
conclusion of Mr. Herbert Spencer in 1852, published

  "seven years before Darwin and Dr. Wallace superadded natural
  selection as an aid in the origin of species. He saw no necessity
  for anything beyond the natural power of change with adaptation; and
  I venture now to add my own testimony, based upon upwards of a
  quarter of a century's observations and experiments, which have
  convinced me that Mr. Spencer was right and Darwin was wrong. His
  words are as follows: 'The supporters of the development hypothesis
  can show ... that any existing species, animal or vegetable, when
  placed under conditions different from its previous ones,
  immediately begins to undergo certain changes of structure fitting
  it for the new conditions; ... that in the successive generations
  these changes continue until ultimately the new conditions become
  the natural ones.... They can show that throughout all organic
  nature there is at work a modifying influence of the kind they
  assign as the causes of specific differences; an influence which,
  though slow in its action, does in time, if the circumstances demand
  it, produce marked changes.'"[255]

Mr. Henslow adduces observations and experiments by Buckman, Bailey,
Lesage, Lothelier, Costantin, Bonnier, and others, all demonstrating
that the environment acts directly on the plant.

Henslow also suggests that endogens have originated from exogenous
plants through self-adaptation to an aquatic habit,[256] which is in
line with our idea that certain classes of animals have diverged from
the more primitive ones by change of habit, although this has led to the
development of new class-characteristics by use and disuse, phenomena
which naturally do not operate in plants, owing to their fixed
conditions.

Other botanists--French, German, and English--have also been led to
believe in the direct influence of the _milieu_, or environment. Such
are Viet,[257] and Scott Elliot,[258] who attributes the growth of bulbs
to the "direct influence of the climate."

In a recent work Costantin[259] shares the belief emphatically held by
some German botanists in the direct influence of the environment not
only as modifying the form, but also as impressing, without the aid of
natural selection, that form on the species or part of its inherited
stock; and one chapter is devoted to an attempt to establish the thesis
that acquired characters are inherited.

In his essay "On Dynamic Influences in Evolution" W. H. Dall[260] holds
the view that--

  "The environment stands in a relation to the individual such as the
  hammer and anvil bear to the blacksmith's hot iron. The organism
  suffers during its entire existence a continuous series of
  mechanical impacts, none the less real because invisible, or
  disguised by the fact that some of them are precipitated by
  voluntary effort of the individual itself.... It is probable that
  since the initiation of life upon the planet no two organisms have
  ever been subjected to exactly the same dynamic influences during
  their development.... The reactions of the organism against the
  physical forces and mechanical properties of its environment are
  abundantly sufficient, if we are granted a single organism, with a
  tendency to grow, to begin with; time for the operation of the
  forces; and the principle of the survival of the fittest."

In his paper on the hinge of Pelecypod molluscs and its development, he
has pointed out a number of the particular ways in which the dynamics of
the environment may act on the characters of the hinge and shell of
bivalve molluscs. He has also shown that the initiation and development
of the columellar plaits in Voluta, Mitra, and other gasteropod molluscs
"are the necessary mechanical result of certain comparatively simple
physical conditions; and that the variations and peculiarities connected
with these plaits perfectly harmonize with the results which follow
within organic material subjected to analogous stresses."

In the same line of study is Dr. R. T. Jackson's[261] work on the
mechanical origin of characters in the lamellibranch molluscs. "The
bivalve nature of the shell doubtless arose," he says, "from the
splitting on the median line of a primitive univalvular ancestor;" and
he adds: "A parallel case is seen in the development of a bivalve shell
in ancient crustaceans;" in both types of shells "the form is induced by
the mechanical conditions of the case." The adductor muscles of bivalve
molluscs and crustaceans are, he shows plainly, the necessary
consequence of the bivalvular condition.

In his theory as to the origin of the siphon of the clam (_Mya
arenaria_), he explains it in a manner identical with Lamarck's
explanations of the origin of the wading and swimming birds, etc., even
to the use of the words "effort" and "habit."

  "In _Mya arenaria_ we find a highly elongated siphon. In the young
  the siphon hardly extends beyond the borders of the valves, and then
  the animal lives at or close to the surface. In progressive growth,
  as the animal burrows deeper, the siphon elongates, until it attains
  a length many times the total length of the valves.

  "The ontogeny of the individual and the paleontology of the family
  both show that Mya came from a form with a very abbreviated siphon,
  and it seems evident that the long siphon of this genus was brought
  about by the effort to reach the surface induced by the habit of
  deep burial."

  "The tendency to equalize the form of growth in a horizontal plane,
  or the geomalic tendency of Professor Hyatt,[262] is seen markedly
  in pelecypods. In forms which crawl on the free borders of the
  valves, the right and left growth in relation to the perpendicular
  is obvious, and agrees with the right and left sides of the animal.
  In Pecten the animal at rest lies on the right valve, and swims or
  flies with the right valve lowermost. Here equalization to the right
  and left of the perpendicular line passing through the centre of
  gravity is very marked (especially in the Vola division of the
  group); but the induced right and left aspect corresponds to the
  dorsal and ventral sides of the animal, not the right and left
  sides, as in the former case. Lima, a near ally of Pecten, swims
  with the edges of the valves perpendicular. In this case the
  geomalic growth corresponds to the right and left sides of the
  animal.

  "The oyster has a deep or spoon-shaped attached valve, and a flat or
  flatter free valve. This form, or a modification of it, we find to
  be characteristic of all pelecypods which are attached to a foreign
  object of support by the cementation of one valve. All are highly
  modified, and are strikingly different from the normal form seen in
  locomotive types of the group. The oyster may be taken as the type
  of the form adopted by attached pelecypods. The two valves are
  unequal, the attached valve being concave, the free valve flat; but
  they are not only unequal, they are often very dissimilar--as
  different as if they belonged to a distinct type in what would be
  considered typical forms. This is remarkable as a case of acquired
  and inherited characteristics finding very different expression in
  the two valves of a group belonging to a class typically
  equivalvular. The attached valve is the most highly modified, and
  the free is least modified, retaining more fully ancestral
  characters. Therefore, it is to the free young before fixation takes
  place and to the free, least-modified valve that we must turn in
  tracing genetic relations of attached groups. Another characteristic
  of attached pelecypods is camerated structure, which is most
  frequent and extensive in the thick attached valve. The form as
  above described is characteristic of the Ostreidæ, Hinnites,
  Spondylus, and Plicatula, Dimya, Pernostrea, Aetheria, and Mulleria;
  and Chama and its near allies. These various genera, though
  ostreiform in the adult, are equivalvular and of totally different
  form in the free young. The several types cited are from widely
  separated families of pelecypods, yet all, under the same given
  conditions, adopt a closely similar form, which is strong proof that
  common forces acting on all alike have induced the resulting form.
  What the forces are that have induced this form it is not easy to
  see from the study of this form alone; but the ostrean form is the
  base of a series, from the summit of which we get a clearer view."
  (_Amer. Nat._, pp. 18-20.)

Here we see, plainly brought out by Jackson's researches, that the
Lamarckian factors of change of environment and consequently of habit,
effort, use and disuse, or mechanical strains resulting in the
modifications of some, and even the appearance of new organs, as the
adductor muscles, have originated new characters which are peculiar to
the class, and thus a new class has been originated. The mollusca,
indeed, show to an unusual extent the influence of a change in
environment and of use and disuse in the formation of classes.

Lang's treatment, in his _Text-book of Comparative Anatomy_ (1888), of
the subjects of the musculature of worms and crustacea, and of the
mechanism of the motion of the segmented body in the Arthropoda, is of
much value in relation to the mechanical genesis of the body segments
and limbs of the members of this type. Dr. B. Sharp has also discussed
the same subject (_American Naturalist_, 1893, p. 89), also Graber in
his works, while the present writer in his _Text-book of Entomology_
(1898) has attempted to treat of the mechanical origin of the segments
of insects, and of the limbs and their jointed structure, along the
lines laid down by Herbert Spencer, Lang, Sharp, and Graber.

W. Roux[263] has inquired how natural selection could have determined
the special orientation of the sheets of spongy tissue of bone. He
contends that the selection of accidental variation could not originate
species, because such variations are isolated, and because, to
constitute a real advantage, they should rest on several characters
taken together. His example is the transformation of aquatic into
terrestrial animals.

G. Pfeffer[264] opposes the efficacy of natural selection, as do C.
Emery[265] and O. Hertwig. The essence of Hertwig's _The Biological
Problem of To-day_ (1894) is that "in obedience to different external
influences the same rudiments may give rise to different adult
structures" (p. 128). Delage, in his _Théories sur l'Hérédité_,
summarizes under seven heads the objections of these distinguished
biologists. Species arise, he says, from general variations, due to
change in the conditions of life, such as food, climate, use and disuse,
very rarely individual variations, such as sports or aberrations, which
are more or less the result of disease.

Mention should also be made of the essays and works of H. Driesch,[266]
De Varigny,[267] Danilewsky,[268] Verworn,[269] Davenport,[270]
Gadow,[271] and others.

In his address on "Neodarwinism and Neolamarckism," Mr. Lester F. Ward,
the palæobotanist, says:

  "I shall be obliged to confine myself almost exclusively to the one
  great mind, who far more than all others combined paved the way for
  the new science of biology to be founded by Darwin, namely,
  Lamarck." After showing that Lamarck established the functional, or
  what we would call the dynamic factors, he goes on to say that
  "Lamarck, although he clearly grasped the law of competition, or the
  struggle for existence, the law of adaptation, or the correspondence
  of the organism to the changing environment, the transmutation of
  species, and the genealogical descent of all organic beings, the
  more complex from the more simple; he nevertheless failed to
  conceive the selective principle as formulated by Darwin and
  Wallace, which so admirably complemented these great laws."[272]

As is well known, Huxley was, if we understand his expressions aright,
not fully convinced of the entire adequacy of natural selection.

  "There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, then; but
  it is another question whether he has fulfilled all the conditions
  imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved, in fact, that
  species may be originated by selection? that there is such a thing
  as natural selection? that none of the phenomena exhibited by
  species are inconsistent with the origin of species in this way?

       *       *       *       *       *

  "After much consideration, with assuredly no bias against
  Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence
  stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having
  all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been
  originated by selection, whether artificial or natural. Groups
  having the morphological character of species, distinct and
  permanent races, in fact, have been so produced over and over again;
  but there is no positive evidence, at present, that any group of
  animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to
  another group which was even in the least degree infertile with the
  first. Mr. Darwin is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings
  forward a multitude of ingenious and important arguments to diminish
  the force of the objection."[273]

We have cited the foregoing conclusions and opinions of upwards of forty
working biologists, many of whom were brought up, so to speak, in the
Darwinian faith, to show that the pendulum of evolutionary thought is
swinging away from the narrow and restricted conception of natural
selection, pure and simple, as the sole or most important factor, and
returning in the direction of Lamarckism.

We may venture to say of Lamarck what Huxley once said of Descartes,
that he expressed "the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three
centuries after" him. Only the change of belief, due to the rapid
accumulation of observed facts, has come in a period shorter than "two
or three centuries;" for, at the end of the very century in which
Lamarck, whatever his crudities, vagueness, and lack of observations and
experiments, published his views, wherein are laid the foundations on
which natural selection rests, the consensus of opinion as to the direct
and indirect influence of the environment, and the inadequacy of natural
selection as an initial factor, was becoming stronger and deeper-rooted
each year.

We must never forget or underestimate, however, the inestimable value of
the services rendered by Darwin, who by his patience, industry, and rare
genius for observation and experiment, and his powers of lucid
exposition, convinced the world of the truth of evolution, with the
result that it has transformed the philosophy of our day. We are all of
us evolutionists, though we may differ as to the nature of the efficient
causes.


FOOTNOTES:

[204] Vol. ii., p. 167, 1871.

[205] Vol. ii., p. 195.

[206] Vol. i., § 166, p. 456.

[207] _The Factors of Organic Evolution_, 1895, p. 460.

[208] _Schöpfungegeschichte_, 1868. _The History of Creation_, New York,
ii., p. 355.

[209] Alcide d'Orbigny, _Paléontologie française_, Paris, 1840-59.

[210] Abstract in Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History,
xvii., December 16, 1874.

[211] _Zeitschr. der deutsch. geol. Gesellschaft_, 1875.

[212] _Palæontologica Indica_. Jurassic Fauna of Kutch. I. Cephalopoda,
pp. 242-243. (See Hyatt's _Genesis of the Arietidæ_, pp. 27, 42.)

[213] "Genera of Fossil Cephalopods," Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist.,
xxii., April 4, 1883, p. 265.

[214] "Revision of the North American Poriferæ." Memoirs Bost. Soc. Nat.
Hist., ii., part iv., 1877.

[215] _Three Cruises of the "Blake,"_ 1888, ii., p. 158.

[216] The earliest paper in which he adopted the Lamarckian doctrines of
use and effort was his "Methods of Creation of Organic Types" (1871). In
this paper Cope remarks that he "has never read Lamarck in French, nor
seen a statement of his theory in English, except the very slight
notices in the _Origin of Species_ and _Chambers' Encyclopædia_, the
latter subsequent to the first reading of this paper." It is interesting
to see how thoroughly Lamarckian Cope was in his views on the descent
theory.

[217] Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Troy meeting, 1870. Printed in August, 1871.

[218] _American Naturalist_, v., December, 1871, p. 750. See also
pp. 751, 759, 760.

[219] Printed in advance, being chapter xiii. of _Our Common Insects_,
Salem, 1873, pp. 172, 174, 179, 180, 181, 185.

[220] "A New Cave Fauna in Utah." _Bulletin of the United States
Geological Survey_, iii., April 9, 1877, p. 167.

[221] Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, iv., 1888, pp. 156:
27 plates. See also _American Naturalist_, Sept., 1888, xxii., p. 808,
and Sept., 1894, xxviii., p. 333.

[222] Carl H. Eigenmann, in his elaborate memoir, _The Eyes of the
Blind Vertebrates of North America (Archiv für Entwickelungsmechanik der
Organismen_, 1899, viii.), concludes that the Lamarckian view, that
through disuse and the transmission by heredity of the characters thus
inherited the eyes of blind fishes are diminished, "is the only view so
far examined that does not on the face of it present serious objections"
(pp. 605-609).

[223] "Hints on the Evolution of the Bristles, Spines, and Tubercles of
Certain Caterpillars, etc." Proceedings Boston Society of Natural
History, xxiv., 1890, pp. 493-560; 2 plates.

[224] E. J. Marey: "Le Transformisme et la Physiologie Expérimentale,
Cours du Collège de France," _Revue Scientifique_, 2^me série, iv.,
p. 818. (Function makes the organ, especially in the osseous and
muscular systems.) See also A. Dohrn: _Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und
das Princip des Functionswechsels_, Leipzig, 1875. See also Lamarck's
opinion, p. 295.

[225] "On the Inheritance of Acquired Characters in Animals with a
Complete Metamorphosis." Proceedings Amer. Acad. Arts and Sciences,
Boston, xxix. (N. S., xxi.). 1894, pp. 331-370; also monograph of
"Bombycine Moths," Memoirs Nat. Acad. Sciences, vii., 1895, p. 33.

[226] In 1885, in the Introduction to the _Standard Natural History_, we
proposed the term Neolamarckianism, or Lamarckism in its modern form, to
designate the series of factors of organic evolution, and we take the
liberty to quote the passage in which the word first occurs. We may add
that the briefer form, Neolamarckism, is the more preferable.

"In the United States a number of naturalists have advocated what may be
called Neo-Lamarckian views of evolution, especially the conception that
in some cases rapid evolution may occur. The present writer, contrary to
pure Darwinians, believes that many species, but more especially types
of genera and families, have been produced by changes in the environment
acting often with more or less rapidity on the organism, resulting at
times in a new genus, or even a family type. Natural selection, acting
through thousands, and sometimes millions, of generations of animals and
plants, often operates too slowly; there are gaps which have been, so to
speak, intentionally left by Nature. Moreover, natural selection was, as
used by some writers, more an idea than a _vera causa_. Natural
selection also begins with the assumption of a tendency to variation,
and presupposes a world already tenanted by vast numbers of animals
among which a struggle for existence was going on, and the few were
victorious over the many. But the entire inadequacy of Darwinism to
account for the primitive origin of life forms, for the original
diversity in the different branches of the tree of life forms, the
interdependence of the creation of ancient faunas and floras on
geological revolutions, and consequent sudden changes in the environment
of organisms, has convinced us that Darwinism is but one of a number of
factors of a true evolution theory; that it comes in play only as the
last term of a series of evolutionary agencies or causes; and that it
rather accounts, as first suggested by the Duke of Argyll, for the
_preservation_ of forms than for their origination. We may, in fact,
compare Darwinism to the apex of a pyramid, the larger mass of the
pyramid representing the complex of theories necessary to account for
the world of life as it has been and now is. In other words, we believe
in a modified and greatly extended Lamarckianism, or what may be called
Neo-Lamarckianism."

[227] _Studies in the Theory of Descent_. By Dr. August Weismann.
Translated and edited, with notes, by Raphael Meldola. London, 1882.
2 vols.

[228] "The Influence of Physical Conditions in the Genesis of Species,"
_Radical Review_, i., May, 1877. See also J. A. Allen in Bull. Mus.
Comp. Zoöl. ii., 1871; also R. Ridgway, _American Journal of Science_,
December, 1872, January, 1873.

[229] Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical
Survey Territories, 1873. Pp. 543-560. See also the author's monograph
of Geometrid Moths or Phalænidæ of the United States, 1876, pp. 584-589,
and monograph of Bombycine Moths (Notodontidæ), p. 50.

[230] Proceedings Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia (1877),
p. 318.

[231] Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1889), p. 546.

[232] Transactions American Philosophical Society, xvi. (1890), and
later papers.

[233] _American Journal of Morphology_ (1891), pp. 395, 398.

[234] "Über die Darwinische Theorie in Besug auf die geographische
Verbreitung der Organismen." Sitzenb. der Akad. München, 1868.
Translated by J. L. Laird under the title, _The Darwinian Theory and the
Law of the Migration of Organisms_. London, 1873. Also _Ueber den
Einfluss der geographischen Isolirung und Colonierbildung auf die
morphologischen Veränderungen der Organismen_. München, 1870.

[235] _Linnæan Society's Journal_: Zoölogy, xi., 1872.

[236] _Linnæan Society's Journal_: Zoölogy, xx., 1887, pp. 189-274,
496-505: also _Nature_, July 18, 1872.

[237] _Evolution without Natural Selection; or, The Segregation of
Species without the aid of the Darwinian Hypothesis_, London (1885),
pp. 1-80.

[238] _Revue Scientifique_, xix. (1877). p. 669. Quoted by Giard in
_Rev. Sci._, 1889, p. 646.

[239] _Animal Life as Affected by the Natural Conditions of Existence._
By Karl Semper. The International Scientific Series. New York, 1881.

[240] _Organic Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired
Characters, according to the Laws of Organic Growth._ Translated by
J. T. Cunningham, 1890.

[241] _On Orthogenesis and the Impotence of Natural Selection in Species
Formation._ Chicago, 1898.

[242] _Die Farbenevolution bei den Pieriden_. Leiden, 1898.

[243] "On Mechanical Selection and Other Problems." _Novitates
Zoologicæ_, iii. Tring, 1896.

[244] _Entwicklung der Raupenzeichnung und Abhängigkeit der letzeren von
der Farbe der Umgebung_, 1894.

[245] _Transmutation der Schmetterlinge infolge
Temperatur-veränderungen_, 1895.

[246] _Ueber den Einfluss der Temperatur bei der Erzeugung der
Schmetterlings-varietäten_, 1880.

[247] _Ueber Farbenwechsel bei niederen Wirbelthieren, bedingt durch
directe Wirkung des Lichts auf die Pigmentzellen._ _Centralblatt für
Physiologie_, 1891, v., p. 326.

[248] _Ueber den Farbenwechsel der Frösche._ _Pflüger's Archiv für
Physiologie_, 1892, li., p. 455.

[249] _Leçon d'Ouverture du Cours de l'Évolution des Êtres organisés._
Paris, 1888, and "Les Facteurs de l'Évolution," _Revue Scientifique_,
November 23, 1889.

[250] _Revue Encyclopédique_, 1897. p. 325. Yet we have an example of
the appearance of a new organ in the case of the duckbill, in which the
horny plates take the place of the teeth which Poulton has discovered in
the embryo. Other cases are the adductor muscles of shelled crustacea.
(See p. 418.)

[251] _La Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin_. Paris, 1884, p. 76.

[252] "Lamarckism and Darwinism." Proceedings Boston Society Natural
History, xxv., 1890, pp. 42-49.

[253] "The Origin of Species without the Aid of Natural Selection,"
_Natural Science_, Oct., 1894. Also, "The Origin of Plant Structures."

[254] "Does Natural Selection play any Part in the Origin of Species
among Plants?" _Natural Science_, Sept., 1897.

[255] "Essay on the Development Hypothesis," 1852, London _Times_.

[256] "A Theoretical Origin of Endogens from Exogens through
Self-Adaptation to an Aquatic Habit," _Linnean Society Journal_: Botany,
1892, _l. c._, xxix., pp. 485-528. A case analogous to kinetogenesis in
animals is his statement based on mathematical calculations by
Mr. Hiern, "that the best form of the margin of floating leaves for
resisting the strains due to running water is circular, or at least the
several portions of the margin would be circular arcs" (p. 517).

[257] "De l'Influence du Milieu sur la Structure anatomique des
Végétaux," _Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot._, ser. 6, xii., 1881, p. 167.

[258] "Notes on the Regional Distribution of the Cape Flora,"
_Transactions_ Botanical Society, Edinburgh. 1891, p. 241.

[259] _Les Végétaux et les Milieux cosmiques_, Paris, 1898, pp. 292.

[260] Proceedings Biological Society of Washington, 1890.

[261] "Phylogeny of the Pelecypoda," Memoirs Boston Society Natural
History, iv., 1890, pp. 277-400. Also, _American Naturalist_, 1891,
xxv., pp. 11-21.

[262] "Transformations of Planorbis at Steinheim, with Remarks on the
Effects of Gravity upon the Forms of Shells and Animals," Proceedings
A. A. A. S., xxix., 1880.

[263] _Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus_. Leipzig, 1881. Also
_Gesammelte Abhandlungen über Entwickelungsmechanik der Organismen_.
Leipzig, 1895.

[264] _Die Unwandlung der Arten ein Vorgang functioneller
Selbsgestaltung_. Leipzig, 1894.

[265] _Gedanken zur Descendenz- und Vererbungstheorie; Biol.
Centralblatt_, xiii., 1893, 397-420.

[266] _Entwickelungmecanische Studien_, 1892-93.

[267] _Experimental Evolution_, 1892; also, "Recherches sur le Nanisme
experimental," _Journ. Anat. et Phys._, 1894.

[268] "Ueber die organsplastischen Kräfte der Organismen," _Arbeit. nat.
Ges._, Petersburg, xvi., 1885; Protok, 79-82.

[269] _General Physiology_, 1899.

[270] _Experimental Morphology_, 1897-99. 2 vols.

[271] "Modifications of Certain Organs which seem to be Illustrations of
the Inheritance of Acquired Characters in Mammals and Birds." _Zool.
Jahrb. Syst. Abth._, 1890, iv., pp. 629-646; also, _The Lost Link_, by
E. Haeckel, with notes, etc., by H. Gadow, 1899.

[272] Proceedings Biological Society of Washington, vi., 1892, pp. 13,
19.

[273] _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews_, 1870, p. 323.




A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF J. B. DE LAMARCK[274]

1778-1828


1778

Flore française ou description succinte de toutes les plantes qui
croissent naturellement en France, disposées selon une nouvelle méthode
d'analyse et à laquelle on a joint la citation de leurs vertus les moins
équivoques en médecine et de leur utilité dans les arts. Paris (Impr.
Nationale), 1778. 8vo, 3 vol.

Vol. I. Ext. du Rapport fait par MM. Duhamet et Guettard de cet ouvrage.
pp. 1-4.

    Discours préliminaire. pp. i-cxix.
    Principes élémentaires de Botanique. pp. 1-223.
    Méthode analytique.--Plantes cryptogames. pp. 1-132, viii, pl.

Vol. II. Méthode analytique.--Plantes adultes, ou dont les fleurs sont
dans un état de développement parfait. pp. iv., 684.

Vol. III. Méthode analytique. pp. 654, x.

_Idem._ 2e édit. Paris, 1793.


(1805-15)

Flore française ou description succinte de toutes les plantes qui
croissent naturellement en France, disposées selon une nouvelle méthode
d'analyse, et précédées par un exposé des principes élémentaires de la
Botanique.

(En collaboration avec A. P. de Candolle). Édition III. Paris (Agasse),
1805. 4 vol., 8vo.

Vol. I. Lettre de M. de Candolle à M. Lamarck. pp. xv.

    Discours préliminaire. (Réimpression de la 1re édit.) pp. 1-60.
    Principes élémentaires de Botanique, pp. 61-224.
    Méthode analytique: {analyse des genres. pp. 1-76.
                        {analyse des espèces. pp. 77-388, 10 pl.

Vol. II. Explication de la Carte botanique de France, pp. i-xii. Plantes
acotylédonées. pp. 1-600. Carte coloriée.

Vol. III. Monocotylédonées phanérogames. pp. 731.

Vol. IV.         "               "       pp. 944.

Même édition, augmentée du tome 5 et tome 6, contenant 1300 espèces non
décrites dans les cinq premiers volumes. Paris (Desray), 1815. 8vo,
pp. 622.

Lettre de M. A. P. de Candolle à M. Lamarck, pp. 10.


1783

Dictionnaire botanique.--(En Encyclopédie méthodique. Paris, in 4to.) I,
1783; II, 1786; pour le IIIe volume, 1789, Lamarck a été aidé par
Desrousseaux. Le IVe, 1795, est de Desrousseaux, Poiret et Savigny. Les
derniers: V, 1804; VI, 1804; VII, 1806; et VIII, 1808, sont de Poiret.

Lamarck et Poiret. Encyclopédie méthod.: Botanique. 8 vols. et suppl.
1 à 3, avec 900 pl.


1784

Mémoire sur un nouveau genre de plante nommé Brucea, et sur le faux
Brésillet d'Amérique. Mém. Acad. des Sci. 21 janvier 1784. pp. 342-347.


1785

Mémoire sur les classes les plus convenables à établir parmi les
végétaux et sur l'analogie de leur nombre avec celles déterminées dans
le règne animal, ayant égard de part et d'autre à la perfection graduée
des organes. (De la classification des végétaux.) Mém. Acad. des Sci.
1785. pp. 437-453.


1788

Mémoire sur le genre du Muscadier, Myristica. Mém. Acad. des Sci. 1788.
pp. 148-168, pl. v.-ix.


1790

Mémoire sur les cabinets d'histoire naturelle, et particulièrement sur
celui du Jardin des Plantes; contenant l'exposition du régime et de
l'ordre qui conviennent à cet établissement, pour qu'il soit vraiment
utile. (No imprint.) 4to, pp. 15.

Considérations en faveur du Chevalier de la Marck, ancien officier au
Régiment de Beaujolais, de l'Académie Royale des Sciences; Botaniste du
Roi, attaché au Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle. [Paris] 1790. 8vo, pp. 7.


1791

Instruction aux voyageurs autour du monde, sur les observations les plus
essentielles à faire en botanique. Soc. Philom. (Bull.) Paris, 1791,
pp. 8.

Illustrations des genres, ou exposition des caractères de tous les
genres de plantes établis par les botanistes (Encyclopédie méthodique):
I, 1791; II, 1793; III, 1800, avec 900 planches. (Le supplément, qui
constitue le tome IV, 1823, est de Poiret.)

Extrait de la flore française. Paris, 1792. 1 vol. in-8vo.

Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature.
Botanique continuée par J. L. M. Poiret. Paris (Panckoucke), 1791-1823.
Text, 3 v.; Pls., 4 v. (Encyclopédie méthodique.) 4to.

Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature.
Mollusques testacés (et polypes divers). Paris (Panckoucke) [etc.],
1791-1816. Text (3), 180 pp. Pls. 2 v. (Encyclopédie méthodique.) 4to.

_Idem._ Continuator Bruguière, Jean Guillaume. Histoire naturelle des
vers. Par Bruguière [et J. B. P. A. de Lamarck; continuée par G. P.
Deshayes]. Paris (Panckoucke) [etc.], 1792-1832, 3 v. (Encyclopédie
méthodique.) 4to.


1792

Journal d'Histoire naturelle, rédigé par MM. Lamarck, Bruguière,
Olivier, Haüy et Pelletier. Tomes I, II. Pl. 1-24, 25-40. Paris (Impr.
du Cercle social), 1792. In-8vo, 2 vol.

Le même, sous le titre: Choix de mémoires sur divers objets d'histoire
naturelle, par Lamarck; formant les collections du Journal d'Hist. nat.
3 vol. in-8vo, tirés de format in-4to, dont le 3me contient 42 pl. Paris
(Imprim. du Cercle social), 1792.

_Nota._--Tous les exemplaires de cet ouvrage que l'on rencontre sont
incomplets. Un exemplaire de format in-8vo, provenant de la Bibliothèque
Cuvier (et qui se trouve à la Bibliothèque du Muséum), contient les
pages 320 à 360; 8 pages copiées à la main terminent le volume, dont on
connaît complet un seul exemplaire.

Sur l'histoire naturelle en général.

Sur la nature des articles de ce journal qui concernent la Botanique.

Philosophie botanique. L'auteur propose dans cet article un nouveau
genre de plante: le Genre Rothia (Rothia Carolinensis, p. 17, pl. 1).
Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 1-19. (Ce recueil porte aussi le titre
suivant: Choix de mémoires sur divers objets d'Histoire naturelle, par
MM. Lamarck, Bruguière, Olivier, Haüy et Pelletier.)

Sur le Calodendron (Calodendron Capense), pp. 56, pl. 3. Journ. d'Hist.
nat. I, 1792. pp. 56-62.

Philosophie botanique. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 81-92. (Dans cet
article l'auteur donne la description de: Mimosa obliqua. pp. 89,
pl. 5.)

Sur les travaux de Linné. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 136-144.
(L'auteur conclut que tout ce que fit Linnæus pour la botanique, il le
fit aussi pour la zoologie; et ne donna pas moins de preuves de son
génie en traitant le règne minéral, quoique dans cette partie de
l'histoire naturelle il fut moins heureux en principes et en convenances
dans les rapprochements et les déterminations, que dans les deux autres
règnes.)

Sur une nouvelle espèce de Vantane. Ventanea parviflora. p. 145, pl. 7.
Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 144-148.

Exposition d'un nouveau genre de plante nommé Drapètes. Drapetes
muscosus et seq. p. 159, pl. 10, fig. 1. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792.
pp. 1-190.

Sur le Phyllachne. Phyllachne uliginosa. p. 192, pl. 10, fig. 2. Journ.
d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 190-192.

Sur l'Hyoseris Virginica. p. 222, pl. 12. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792.
pp. 222-224.

Sur le genre des Acacies; et particulièrement sur l'Acacie hétérophille.
Mimosa heterophylla. p. 291, pl. 15. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792.
pp. 288-292.

Sur les Systèmes et les Méthodes de Botanique et sur l'Analyse. Journ.
d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 300-307.

Sur une nouvelle espèce de Grassette. Pinguicula campanulata, p. 336,
pl. 18, fig. I. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 334-338.

Sur l'étude des rapports naturels. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792.
pp. 361-371.

Sur les relations dans leur port ou leur aspect, que les plantes de
certaines contrées ont entre elles, et sur une nouvelle espèce
d'Hydrophylle. Hydrophyllum Magellanicum. p. 373, pl. 19. Journ. d'Hist.
nat. I. 1792. pp. 371-376.

Notice sur quelques plantes rares ou nouvelles, observées dans
l'Amérique Septentrionale par M. A. Michaux; adressée à la Société
d'Histoire naturelle de Paris par l'auteur; et rédigée avec des
observations. Canna flava--Pinguicula lutea--Ilex Americana--Ilex
æstivalis--Ipomæa rubra--Mussænda frondosa--Kalmia hirsuta--Andromeda
mariana--A. formosissima. Journ. d'Hist. nat I, 1792. pp. 409-419.

Sur une nouvelle espèce de Loranthe. Loranthus cucullaris. p. 444,
pl. 23. Journ. d'Hist. nat. I, 1792. pp. 444-448.

Sur le nouveau genre Polycarpea. Polycarpæa Teneriffæ. p. 5, pl. 25.
Journ. d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 3-8.

Sur l'augmentation continuelle de nos connaissances à l'égard des
espèces et sur une nouvelle espèce de Sauge. Salvia scabiosæfolia.
p. 44, pl. 27. Journ. d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 41-47.

Sur une nouvelle espèce de Pectis. Pectis pinnata. p. 150, pl. 31.
Journ. d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 148-154.

Sur le nouveau genre Sanvitalia. Sanvitalia procumbens. p. 178, pl. 35.
Journ. d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 176-179.

Sur l'augmentation remarquable des espèces dans beaucoup de genres qui
n'en offraient depuis longtemps qu'une, et particulièrement sur une
nouvelle espèce d'Hélénium. Helenium caniculatum. p. 213, pl. 35. Journ.
d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 210-215.

Observations sur les coquilles, et sur quelques-uns des genres qu'on a
établis dans l'ordre des Vers testacés. Purpurea, Fusus, Murex, Terebra,
etc. Journ. d'Hist. nat. II, 1792. pp. 269-280.

Sur l'Administration forestière, et sur les qualités individuelles des
bois indigènes, ou qui sont acclimatés en France; auxquels on a joint la
description des bois exotiques, que nous fournit le commerce. Par _P. C.
Varenne-Tenille_, Bourg (Philippon), 1792. 2 vol. 8vo. Journ. d'Hist.
nat. II, 1792. pp. 299-301.

Sur quatre espèces d'Hélices. Journ. d'Hist nat. II, 1792. pp. 347-353.

Prodrome d'une nouvelle classification des coquilles, comprenant une
rédaction appropriée des caractères génériques et l'établissement d'un
grand nombre de genres nouveaux.--In Mém. Soc. Hist. nat. Paris, I,
1792. p. 63.

Sur les ouvrages généraux en Histoire naturelle; et particulièrement sur
l'édition du Systema Naturæ de Linnæus, que M. Gmelin vient de publier.
Act. Soc. Hist. nat., Paris, I. 1re Part., 1792. pp. 81-85.


1794

Recherches sur les Causes des principaux Faits physiques, et
particulièrement sur celles de la Combustion, de l'Elévation de l'eau
dans l'état de vapeurs; de la Chaleur produite par le frottement des
corps solides entre eux; de la Chaleur qui se rend sensible dans les
décompositions subites, dans les effervescences et dans le corps de
beaucoup d'animaux pendant la durée de leur vie; de la Causticité, de la
Saveur et de l'Odeur de certains composés; de la Couleur des corps; de
l'Origine des composés et de tous les minéraux; enfin, de l'Entretien de
la vie des êtres organiques, de leur accroissement, de leur état de
vigueur, de leur dépérissement et de leur mort. Avec une planche. Tomes
1, 2. Paris, seconde année de la république [1794]. 8vo.

Mémoire sur les molécules essentiels des composés. Soc. philom. Rapp.,
1792-98. pp. 56-57.

Voyage de Pallas dans plusieurs provinces de l'empire de Russie et dans
l'Asie septentrionale, traduit de l'allemand par Gauthier de la
Peyronnerie. Nouvelle édition revue et enrichie de notes par Lamarck,
Langlès et Billecoq. Paris, an II (1794). 8 vol. in-8vo, avec un atlas
de 108 pl. folio.


1796

Voyage au Japon, par le cap de Bonne-Espérance, les îles de la Sonde,
etc., par Thunberg, traduit, rédigé (sur la version anglaise), etc., par
Langlès, et _revu, quant à l'histoire naturelle_, par Lamarck. Paris.
1796. 2 vol. in-4to (8vo, 4 vol.), av. fig.

Réfutation de la théorie pneumatique et de la nouvelle théorie des
chimistes modernes, etc. Paris, 1796. 1 vol. 8vo.


1797

Mémoires de physique et d'histoire naturelle, établis sur des bases de
raisonnement indépendantes de toute théorie; avec l'explication de
nouvelles considérations sur la cause générale des dissolutions, sur la
matière du feu; sur la couleur des corps; sur la formation des composés;
sur l'origine des minéraux; et sur l'organisation des corps vivants. Lus
à la première classe de l'Institut national, dans ses séances
ordinaires. Paris, an V (1797). 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 410.

De l'influence de la lune sur l'atmosphère terrestre, etc. Bull. Soc.
philom. I., 1797; pp. 116-118. Gilbert Annal. VI, 1800; pp. 204-223; et
Nicholson's Journal, III, 1800; pp. 438-489.

Mémoires de Physique et d'Histoire naturelle. Paris, 1797. 8vo. Biogr.
un., Suppl. LXX. p. 22.


1798

De l'influence de la lune sur l'atmosphère terrestre. Journ. de Phys.
XLVI, 1798; pp. 428-435. Gilbert Annal. VI, 1800; pp. 204-233. Tilloch,
Philos. Mag. I, 1798; pp. 305-306. Paris, Soc. philom. (Bull.) II, 1797;
pp. 116-118. Nicholson's Journ. III, 1800. pp. 488-489.

Sensibility of Plants. (Translated from the Mémoires de Physique.)
Tilloch, Philos. Mag. I, 1798. pp. 305-306.

Mollusques testacés du tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois
règnes de la nature, Paris, an VI (1798). 1 vol. in-4to de 299 pl.,
formant suite à l'Histoire des Vers de Bruguière (1792), continuée par
Deshayes (1830), de l'Encyclopédie méthodique.


1799

Mémoire sur la matière du feu, considéré comme instrument chimique dans
les analyses. 1º, De l'action du feu employé comme instrument chimique
par la voie sèche; p. 134. 2º, De l'action du feu employé comme
instrument chimique par la voie humide; p. 355. Journ. de Phys. XLVIII,
1799. pp. 345-361.

Mémoire sur la matière du son. (Lu à l'Institut national, le 16 brumaire
an VIII, et le 26 du même mois.) Journ. de Phys. XLIX, 1799.
pp. 397-412.

Sur les genres de la Sèche, du Calmar et du Poulpe, vulgairement nommés
polypes de mer. (Lu à l'Institut national le 21 floréal an VI.) Soc.
Hist. nat., Paris (Mém.), 1799. pp. 1-25, pl. 1, 2. Bibl. Paris, Soc.
philom. (Bull.) I, Part. 2, 1799. pp. 129-131 (Extrait).

Prodrome d'une nouvelle Classification des coquilles, comprenant une
rédaction appropriée des caractères génériques, et l'établissement d'un
grand nombre de genres nouveaux. (Lu à l'Institut national le
21 frimaire an VII.) Soc. Hist. nat., Paris (Mém.), 1789. pp. 63-91.
Tableau systématique des Genres--126 g.

Sur les fossiles et l'influence du mouvement des eaux, considérés comme
indices du déplacement continuel du bassin des mers, et de son transport
sur différents points de la surface du globe. (Lu à l'Institut national
le 21 pluviôse an VII [1799].) Hydrogéologie, p. 172.

Annuaire météorologique pour l'an VIII de la République française, etc.
(Annonce.) Paris, Soc. philom. (Bull.) III, 1799. p. 56.


1800

Annuaire météorologique pour l'an VIII de la République. Paris, 1800.
1 vol. 16mo; 116 pp. Bibl., Gilbert Annal. VI, 1800. pp. 216-217.

Mémoire sur le mode de rédiger et de noter les observations
météorologiques, afin d'en obtenir des résultats utiles, et sur les
considérations que l'on doit avoir en vue pour cet objet. Journ. de
Phys. LI, 1800. pp. 419-426.

Annuaire météorologique, contenant l'exposé des probabilités acquises
par une longue suite d'observations sur l'état du ciel et sur les
variations de l'atmosphère, etc. Paris, 1800-1810, 11 volumes, dont les
2 premiers in-18mo, les autres in-8vo.


1801

Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres ou Tableau général des classes, des
ordres et des genres de ces animaux. Présentant leurs caractères
essentiels et leur distribution d'après leurs rapports naturels, et de
leur organisation; et suivant l'arrangement établi dans les galeries du
Muséum d'Histoire naturelle parmi les dépouilles conservées. Précédé du
discours d'Ouverture du Cours de Zoologie donné dans le Muséum
d'Histoire naturelle l'an VIII de la République, le 21 floréal. Paris
(Déterville), an IX (1801), VIII. pp. 452. Bibl., Paris, Soc. philom.
(Bull.) III, 1802-4. pp. 7-8.

Recherches sur la périodicité présumée des principales variations de
l'atmosphère, et sur les moyens de s'assurer de son existence et de sa
détermination. (Lues à l'Institut national de France, le 26 ventôse
an IX.) Journ. de Phys. LII. 1801. pp. 296-316.

Réfutation des résultats obtenus par le C. Cotte, dans ses recherches
sur l'influence des constitutions lunaires, et imprimés dans le Journal
de Physique, mois de fructidor an IX. p. 221. Journ. de Phys. LIII,
1801. pp. 277-281.

Sur la distinction des tempêtes d'avec les orages, les ouragans, etc. Et
sur le caractère du vent désastreux du 18 brumaire an IX (9 novembre
1800). (Lu à l'Institut national le 11 frimaire an IX.) Journ. de Phys.
LII, floréal, 1801. pp. 377-380.


1802

Sur les variations de l'état du ciel dans les latitudes moyennes entre
l'équateur et le pôle, et sur les principales causes qui y donnent lieu.
Journ. de Phys. LVI. 1802. pp. 114-138.

Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivants et particulièrement sur
son origine, sur la cause de ses développements et des progrès de sa
composition, et sur celles qui, tendant continuellement à la détruire,
dans chaque individu, amènent nécessairement sa mort. (Précédé du
Discours d'Ouverture du Cours de Zoologie au Mus. nat. d'Hist. nat., an
X de la République.) Paris (Maillard) [1802]. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 216.

  Affinités chimiques, p. 73.--Anéantissement de la colonne
  vertébrale, p. 21.--Du coeur, p. 26.--De l'organe de la vue,
  p. 32.--Annélides, p. 24.--Arachnides, p. 27.--La Biologie,
  p. 186.--Création de la faculté de se reproduire,
  p. 114.--Crustacés, p. 25.--Dégradation de l'organisation d'une
  extrémité à l'autre de la chaîne des animaux, p. 7.--Échelle
  animale, p. 39.--Les éléments, p. 12.--Les espèces,
  pp. 141-149.--Exercice d'un organe, pp. 53, 56, 65, 125.--Les
  facultés, pp. 50, 56, 84, 125.--Fécondation, p. 95.--Fluide nerveux,
  pp. 114, 157, 166, 169.--Formation directe des premiers traits de
  l'organisation, pp. 68, 92, 94, 98.--Générations spontanées, pp. 46,
  100, 115.--Habitudes des animaux, pp. 50, 125, 129.--Homme,
  p. 124.--Imitation, p. 130.--Influence du fluide nerveux sur les
  muscles, p. 169.--Insectes, p. 28.--Irritabilité, pp. 109, 179,
  186.--Mammaux, p. 15.--Molécules intégrants des composés,
  p. 150.--Mollusques, p. 23.--Mouvement organique,
  pp. 7-9.--Multiplication des individus, pp. 117-120.--Nature
  animale, p. 8.--Nutrition, p. 8.--Oiseaux, p. 16.--Orgasme vital,
  pp. 79-83.--Organes des corps vivants, p. 111.--Organes de la
  pensée, p. 127.--Organisation, pp. 9, 98, 104, 134.--Pensée,
  p. 166.--Poissons, p. 20.--Polypes, p. 35.--Quadrumanes, pp. 131,
  135, 136.--Radiaires, p. 32.--Raison, p. 125.--Reptiles,
  p. 18.--Sentiment, p. 177.--Troglodyte, p. 126.--Tableau du règne
  animal, p. 37.--Vie, p. 71.

Mémoire sur la Tubicinelle. (Lu à l'Assemblée des Professeurs du Muséum
d'Histoire naturelle.) Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, I, 1802. pp. 4,
pl. 464. Bull. Soc. philom. III, Paris, 1801-1804. pp. 170-171.
(Extrait.)

Mémoires sur les Cabinets d'Histoire naturelle et particulièrement sur
celui du Jardin des Plantes; contenant l'exposition du régime et de
l'ordre qui conviennent à cet établissement, pour qu'il soit vraiment
utile. Ext. des Ann. du Mus. (1802). Paris. in-4to. 15 p.

  Des diverses sortes de Cabinets où l'on rassemble des objets
  d'Histoire naturelle, p. 2.

  Vrais principes que l'on doit suivre dans l'institution d'un Cabinet
  d'Histoire naturelle, p. 3.

  Sur le Cabinet d'Histoire naturelle du Jardin des Plantes, p. 5.

Hydrogéologie, ou recherches de l'influence générale des eaux sur
surface du globe terrestre; sur les causes de l'existence du bassin des
mers; de son déplacement et de son transport successif sur les
différents points de la surface de ce globe; enfin, sur les changements
que les corps vivants exercent sur la nature et l'état de cette surface.
Paris, an X [1802]. 8vo. pp. 268.


1802-6

Mémoires sur les fossiles des environs de Paris, comprenant la
détermination des espèces qui appartiennent aux animaux marins sans
vertèbres, et dont la plupart sont figurés dans la Collection des Velins
du Muséum.

  1er Mémoire. Mollusques testacés dont on trouve les dépouilles
  fossiles dans les environs de Paris.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) I, 1802. pp. 299-312; 383-391;
  474-479.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) II, 1803. pp. 57-64; 163-169; 217-227;
  315-321; 385-391.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) III, 1804. pp. 163-170; 266-274.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) IV, 1804. pp. 46-55; 105-115; 211-222;
  289-298; 429-436.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) V, 1804. pp. 28-36; 91-98; 179-180;
  237-245; 349-356.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VI, 1805. pp. 117-126; 214-221;
  222-228; 337-345.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VII, 1806. pp. 53-62; 136-140;
  231-242; 419-430.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VIII, 1806. pp. 156-166; 347-355;
  461-469.

  Tirage à part. Paris. In-4to. 1806. pp. 284.

  1er mémoire. Genres Chiton, Patella, Fissurella. pp. 308-312.

  2e     "       "    Emarginula, Calyptræa, Conus, Cypræa, Terebellum
  et Oliva. pp. 383-391.

  3e mémoire. Genres Ancilla, Voluta. pp. 474-479.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) I, 1802.

  4e mémoire. Genres Mitra, Marginella, Cancellaria, Purpura.
  pp. 57-64.

  5e mémoire. Genres Buccinum, Terebra, Harpa, Cassis. pp. 163-169.

  6e mémoire. Genres Strombus, Rostellaria, Murex. pp. 217-227.

  7e mémoire. Genre Fusus. pp. 315-321.

  8e    "     Genres Fusus, Pyrula. pp. 385-391.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) II, 1803.

  9e mémoire. Genre Pleurotoma. pp. 163-170.

  10e mémoire. Genres Pleurotoma, Cerithium. pp. 266-274.

  11e et 12e mémoires. Genre Cerithium. pp. 343-352; 436-441.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) III, 1804.

  13e mémoire. Genres Trochus, Solarium. pp. 46-55.

  14e    "       "    Turbo, Delphinula, Cyclostoma. pp. 105-115.

  15e mémoire. Genres Scalaria, Turritella, Bulla. pp. 212-222.

  16e    "       "    Bulimus, Phasianella, Lymnæa. pp. 289-298.

  17e mémoire. Genres Melania, Auricula, pp. 429-436.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) IV, 1804.

  18e mémoire. Genres Volvaria, Ampullaria, Planorbis. pp. 28-36.

  19e mémoire. Genres Helicina, Nerita, Natica. pp. 91-98.

  20e    "       "    Nautilus, Discorbis, Rotalia, Lenticulina.
  pp. 179-188.

  21e mémoire. Genres Nummulites, Lituola, Spirolina. pp. 237-245.

  22e mémoire. Genres Miliola, Renulina, Gyrogona. pp. 349-357.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) V, 1804.

  23e mémoire. Genres Pinna, Mytilus, Modiola, Nucula. pp. 117-126.

  24e mémoire. Genres Pectunculus, Arca. pp. 214-221.

  25e " " Cucullæa, Cardita, Cardium. pp. 337-346.

  26e mémoire. Genres Crassatella, Mactra, Erycina. pp. 407-415.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VI, 1805.

  27e mémoire. Genres Erycina, Venericardia, Venus. pp. 53-62.

  28e " " Venus, Cytherea, Donax. pp. 130-140.

  29e " " Tellina, Lucina. pp. 231-239.

  30e " " Cyclas, Solen, Fistulana. pp. 419-430.

Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VII, 1806.

  31e mémoire. Genre Ostrea. pp. 156-158.

  32e " Genres Chama, Spondylus, Pecten. pp. 347-356.

  33e mémoire. Genres Lima, Corbula. pp. 461-470.

  Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VIII, 1806.

Sur la crénatule, nouveau genre de coquillage. Pl. 2. Cr.
avicularis.--Cr. mytiloides.--Cr. phasianoptera. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat.,
Paris, III, 1804. pp. 25-31, pl. 2.

Sur deux nouveaux genres d'insectes de la Nouvelle Hollande: Chiroscelis
bifenestra; p. 262. Panops Baudini; p. 265. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris,
III, 1804. pp. 260-265.

Sur une nouvelle espèce de Trigonie, et sur une nouvelle espèce
d'Huître, découvertes dans le voyage du Capitaine Baudin. Trigonia
suborbiculata; p. 355, pl. 4, fig. 1. Ostrea ovato-cuneiformis; p. 358,
pl. 4, fig. 2. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, IV, 1804. pp. 351-359.

Mémoire sur deux nouvelles espèces de Volutes des mers de la Nouvelle
Hollande. Voluta undulata; p. 157, pl. xii., fig. 1. Voluta nivosa;
p. 158, pl. xii., fig. 2, 3. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, V, 1804.
pp. 154-160.

Sur la Galathée, nouveau genre de coquillage bivalve. Galathea radiata.
p. 433, pl. 28. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, V, 1804. pp. 430-434.


1805

Considérations sur quelques faits applicables à la théorie du globe,
observés par M. Péron dans son voyage aux terres australes, et sur
quelques questions géologiques qui naissent de la connaissance de ces
faits. (Observations zoologiques propres à constater l'ancien séjour de
la mer sur le sommet des montagnes des îles de Diemen, de la Nouvelle
Hollande et de l'île Timor.) Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, VI, 1805.
pp. 26-52.

Zusatz das Nordlicht am 22sten Octob., 1804, betreffend. (Translated
from the Moniteur.) Gilbert Annal. XIX, 1805. pp. 143, 249-250.

Sur la Dicerate, nouveau genre de coquillage bivalve. Diceras arietina.
p. 300, pl. 55, fig. 2. Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, VI, 1805.
pp. 298-302.

Sur l'Amphibulime. A. cucullata. p. 305, pl. 55, fig. 1. Ann. Mus. Hist.
nat., Paris, VI, 1805. pp. 303-306.

Recherches asiatiques ou Mémoires de la Société établie au Bengale pour
faire des recherches sur l'histoire et les antiquités, les arts, les
sciences, etc., traduits de l'anglais par La Baume, revues et augmentés
de notes, pour la partie orientale, par Langlès; pour la partie des
sciences, par Lamarck, etc. Paris, 1805. 2 vol. 4to, av. pl.


1805-1809

Recueil de planches des coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris, avec
leurs explications. On y a joint 2 planches de Lymnées fossiles et
autres coquilles qui les accompagnent, des environs de Paris; par
M. Brard. Ensemble 30 pl. gr. en taille douce. Paris (Dufour &
d'Ocagne), 1823. In-4to.

  Explic. des 4 premières planches, 1-4. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  VI, 1805. pp. 122-228, pl. 43-46.

  Explic. des 8 pl. suivantes, 5-7. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) VII,
  1806. pp. 442-444. pl. 13-15.

  Explic. des 3 pl. suivantes, 8-10. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  VIII, 1806. pp. 77-78. pl. 35-37.

  Explic. des 4 pl. suivantes, 11-14. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  VIII, 1806. pp. 383-388, pl. 59-62.

  Explic. des 4 pl. suivantes, 15-18. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.) IX,
  1807. pp. 236-240, pl. 17-20.

  Explic. des 2 pl. suivantes, 19, 20. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  IX, 1807. pp. 399-401, pl. 31-32.

  Explic. des 4 pl. suivantes, 21-24. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  XII, 1808. pp. 456-459, pl. 40-43.

  Explic. des 4 pl. suivantes, 25-28. Paris, Mus. Hist. nat. (Ann.)
  XIV, 1809. pp. 374-375, pl. 20-23.


1806

Synopsis plantarum in Flora Gallica descriptarum. (En collab. avec A. P.
Decandolle.) Paris (H. Agasse). 1806. 1 vol. 8vo. XXIV. 432 pp. Ordinum
generumque anomalorum Clavis analytica. pp. i-xxiv.

Discours d'Ouverture du Cours des Animaux sans Vertèbres, prononcé dans
le Muséum d'Histoire naturelle en mai 1806. Paris, 1806. br., in-8vo.


1807

Sur la division des Mollusques acéphales conchylifères, et sur un
nouveau genre de coquille appartenant à cette division (Etheria). Ann.
Mus. X, 1807. pp. 389-408, 4 pl.

Etwas über die Meteorologie. Gilbert Annal. XVII, 1807. pp. 355-359.

Sur la division des Mollusques acéphalés conchylifères et sur un nouveau
genre de coquille appartenant à cette division. (Genre Etheria.) Ann.
Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, X, 1807. pp. 389-398.

Sur l'Éthérie, nouveau genre de coquille bivalve de la famille des
Camacées. Etheria elliptica; p. 401, pl. 29 et 31, fig. 1. Etheria
trigonule; p. 403, pl. 30 et 31, fig. 2. Etheria semi-lunata; p. 404,
pl. 32, fig. 1, 2. Etheria transversa; p. 406, pl. 32, fig. 3, 4. Ann.
Mus. Hist. nat., Paris. X, 1807. pp. 398-408. (Ce mémoire se rattache au
précédent.)


1809

Philosophie zoologique, ou exposition des considérations relatives à
l'histoire naturelle des animaux; à la diversité de leur organisation et
des facultés qu'ils en obtiennent; aux causes physiques qui maintiennent
en eux la vie et donnent lieu aux mouvements qu'ils exécutent; enfin, à
celles qui produisent, les unes les sentiments, et les autres
l'intelligence de ceux qui en sont doués. Paris (Dentu), 1809. 2 vol.
in-8vo, XXV, 428. 475 pages.

_Idem_, nouvelle Édition. Paris, J. B. Baillière. 1830. (A reprint of
the first edition.)

2me Édition. Revue et précédée d'une introduction biographique par
Charles Martins. Paris. Savy. 1873. 2 vol. 8vo. LXXXIV. 412; 431 pages.

  Vol. I. Première Partie.--Considération sur l'histoire naturelle des
  animaux, leurs caractères, leurs rapports, leur organisation, leur
  distribution, leur classification et leurs espèces.

    Chap. I. Des parties de l'art dans les productions de la nature.
    p. 17.

    Chap. II. Importance de la considération des rapports. p. 39.

    Chap. III. De l'Espèce parmi les corps vivants et de l'idée que
    nous devons attacher à ce mot. p. 53.

    Chap. IV. Généralités sur les animaux. p. 82.

    Chap. V. Sur l'état actuel de la distribution et de la
    classification des animaux. p. 102.

    Chap. VI. Dégradation et simplification de l'organisation d'une
    extrémité à l'autre de la chaîne animale, en procédant du plus
    composé vers le plus simple. p. 130.

    Chap. VII. De l'influence des circonstances sur les actions et
    les habitudes des animaux, et de celle des actions et des
    habitudes de ces corps vivants, comme causes qui modifient leur
    organisation et leurs parties. p. 218.

    Chap. VIII. De l'ordre naturel des animaux, et de la disposition
    qu'il faut donner à leur distribution générale pour la rendre
    conforme à l'ordre même de la nature. p. 269.

  Deuxième Partie.--Considérations sur les causes physiques de la vie,
  les conditions qu'elle exige pour exister, la force excitatrice de
  ses mouvements, les facultés qu'elle donne aux corps qui la possèdent
  et les résultats de son existence dans ces corps.

    Chap. I. Comparaison des corps inorganiques avec les corps
    vivants, suivie d'une parallèle entre les animaux et les végétaux.
    p. 377.

    Chap. II. De la vie, de ce qui la constitue, et des conditions
    essentielles à son existence dans un corps. p. 400.

  Vol. II. 2me Partie.

    Chap. III. De la cause excitatrice des mouvements organiques.
    p. 1.

    Chap. IV. De l'orgasme et de l'irritabilité. p. 20.

    Chap. V. Du tissu cellulaire, considéré comme la gangue dans
    laquelle toute organisation a été formée. p. 46.

    Chap. VI. Des générations directes ou spontanées. p. 61.

    Chap. VII. Des résultats immédiats de la vie dans un corps. p. 91.

    Chap. VIII. Des facultés communes à tous les corps vivants.
    p. 113.

    Chap. IX. Des facultés particulières à certains corps vivants.
    p. 127.

  Troisième Partie.--Considérations sur les causes physiques du
  sentiment; celles qui constituent la force productrice des actions;
  enfin, celles qui donnent lieu aux actes d'intelligence qui
  s'observent dans différents animaux. p. 169.

    Chap. I. Du système nerveux, de sa formation et des différentes
    sortes de fonctions qu'il peut exciter. p. 180.

    Chap. II. Du fluide nerveux. p. 235.

    Chap. III. De la sensibilité et du mécanisme des sensations.
    p. 252.

    Chap. IV. Du sentiment intérieur, des émotions qu'il est
    susceptible d'éprouver, et de la puissance qu'il en acquiert pour
    la production des actions. p. 276.

    Chap. V. De la force productrice des actions des animaux, et de
    quelques faits particuliers qui résultent de l'emploi de cette
    force; p. 302. De la consommation et de l'épuisement du fluide
    nerveux dans la production des actions animales; p. 314. De
    l'origine du penchant aux mêmes actions; p. 318. De l'instinct des
    animaux; p. 320. De l'industrie de certains animaux; p. 327.

    Chap. VI. De la volonté. p. 330.

    Chap. VII. De l'entendement, de son origine, et de celle des
    idées. p. 346.

    Chap. VIII. Des principaux actes de l'entendement, ou de ceux du
    premier ordre dont tous les autres dérivent; p. 388. De
    l'imagination; p. 411. De la raison et de sa comparaison avec
    l'instinct; p. 441.

(Ces notes ont été relevées sur l'édition de 1809.)


1810-1811

Sur la détermination des espèces parmi les animaux sans vertèbres, et
particulièrement parmi les mollusques testacés. (Tirage à part, Paris,
1817. 4to. 5 pls.)

  Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, XV, 1810. pp. 20-26.

    Descript. des Espèces.--Cône (Conus). pp. 26-40; pp. 269-292;
      pp. 422-442.
    Descript. des Espèces.--Porcelaine (Cypræa). pp. 443-454.

  Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, XVI, 1810.

    Descript. des Espèces.--Porcelaine (Cypræa), suite, pp. 89-108.
    Descript. des Espèces.--Ovule (Ovula). pp. 109-114.
        "      "     "      Tarrière (Terebellum). pp. 300-302.
        "      "     "      Ancillaire (Ancillaria). pp. 302-306.
        "      "     "      Olive (Oliva). pp. 306-328.

  Ann. Mus. Hist. nat. XVII, 1811.

    Descript. des Espèces.--Volute (Voluta). pp. 54-80.
        "      "     "      Mitre (Mitra). pp. 195-222.

Description des Espèces du Genre Conus. Ann. Muséum. XV. 1810.
pp. 29-40, 263-292, 422-442.

Description du genre Porcelaine (Cypræa) et des Espèces qui le
composent. Ann. Mus. XV, 1810. pp. 443-454.

Suite de la détermination des Espèces de Mollusques testacés.
Continuation du genre Porcelaine. Ann. Mus. XVI, 1811. pp. 89-114.


1812

Extrait du cours de zoologie du Muséum d'Histoire naturelle sur les
Animaux sans Vertèbres, présentant la distribution et classification de
ces animaux, les caractères des principales divisions et une simple
liste des genres, à l'usage de ceux qui suivent ce cours. Paris, octobre
1812. 8vo. pp. 127.


1813

Sur les polypiers empâtés.

  Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, XX, 1813.
    Pinceau (Penicillus). pp. 294, 297-299.
    Flabellaire (Flabellaria). pp. 298-303.
    Synoique (Synoicum). pp. 303-304.
    Éponge (Spongia). pp. 305-312; 370-386; 432-458.
  Ann. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, I, 1815.
    Téthie (Tethya). pp. 69-71.
    Alcyon (Alcyonium). pp. 72-80; 162-168; 331-333.
    Géodie (Geodia). pp. 333-334.
    Botrylle (Botryllus). pp. 335-338.
    Polycycle (Polycyclus). pp. 338-340.


1813-15

Sur les polypiers corticifères.

  Mém. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, I, 1813. p. 401.
    Corail (Coraillium). pp. 407-410.
    Mélite (Melitæa). pp. 410-413.
    Isis. pp. 413-416.
    Cymosaire (Cymosaria). pp. 467-468.
    Antipate (Antipathes). pp. 469-476.
  Mém. Mus. Hist. nat., Paris, II, 1815.
    Gorgone (Gorgonia). pp. 76-84; 157-164.
    Coralline (Corallina). pp. 227-240.

Rapport fait à l'Institut (en collaboration avec Cuvier) sur les
observations sur les Lombrics, ou les Vers de terre, etc., par Montègre.
Paris, 1815. Br., in-8vo, 1 pl.


1815-22

Histoire naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres, présentant les caractères
généraux et particuliers de ces animaux, leur distribution, leurs
classes, leurs familles, leurs genres, et la citation des principales
Espèces qui s'y rapportent; précédée d'une introduction offrant la
détermination des caractères essentiels de l'Animal, sa distinction du
Végétal et des autres corps naturels; enfin, l'exposition des principes
fondamentaux de la zoologie. Paris, mars 1815 à août 1822. 7 vol. 8vo.
2e édit., Paris, 1835-45. 11 vol. in-8vo.


1818

Suite de la détermination des Espèces de Mollusques testacés. Genres
Volute et Mitre. Ann. Mus. XVII, 1818. pp. 54-80 et 195-222.

Description des genres Tarrière (Terebellum), Ancillaria et Oliva. Ann.
Mus. XVII, 1818. pp. 300-328.


1820

Système analytique des connaissances de l'homme restreintes à celles qui
proviennent directement ou indirectement de l'observation. Paris
(Berlin), 1820. In-8vo. pp. 362.

  Première Partie.--Des Objets que l'homme peut considérer hors de
  lui, et que l'observation peut lui faire connaître, p. 13.

    Chap. I. De la Matière, p. 5.

    Chap. II. De la Nature; p. 20. Définition de la nature, et exposé
    des parties dont se compose l'ordre des choses qui la constitue;
    p. 50. Objets métaphysiques dont l'ensemble constitue la nature;
    p. 51. De la nécessité d'étudier la nature, c'est-à-dire l'ordre
    des choses qui la constitue, les lois qui régissent ses actes, et
    surtout, parmi ces lois, celles qui sont relatives à notre être
    physique; p. 60. Exposition des sources où l'homme a puisé les
    connaissances qu'il possède et dans lesquelles il pourra en
    recueillir quantité d'autres; sources dont l'ensemble constitue
    pour lui le champ des réalités; p. 85.

    Des Objets évidemment produits; p. 97.

    Chap. I. Des Corps inorganiques, p. 100.

    Chap. II. Des Corps vivants; p. 114. Des Végétaux; p. 125. Des
    Animaux; p. 134.

  Deuxième Partie.--De l'Homme et de certains systèmes organiques
  observés en lui, lesquels concourrent à l'exécution de ses actions;
  p. 149. Généralités sur le sentiment; p. 161. Analyse des phénomènes
  qui appartiennent au sentiment; p. 175.

  Sect. I.--De la sensation. p. 177.
    Chap. I. Des sensations particulières, p. 180.
    Chap. II. De la sensation générale.

  Sect. II.--Du sentiment intérieur et de ses principaux produits. p. 191.
    Chap. I. Des penchants naturels. p. 206.
    Chap. II. De l'instinct. p. 228.

  Sect. III.--De l'intelligence, des objets qu'elle emploie, et des
  phénomènes auxquels elle donne lieu. p. 255.
    Chap. I. Des idées. p. 290.
    Chap. II. Du jugement et de la raison. p. 325.
    Chap. III. Imagination. p. 348.


1823

Recueil de planches de coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris, avec
leurs explications. On y a joint deux planches de Lymnées fossiles et
autres coquilles qui les accompagnent, des environs de Paris; par
M. Brard. Paris, 1823. 1 vol. in-4to de 30 pl.


1828

Histoire naturelle des Végétaux par Lamarck et Mirbel. Paris, Déterville
(Roret). In-18mo. 15 vol., avec 120 pl.

  Cet ouvrage fait partie de Buffon: Cours complet d'Histoire naturelle
  (Edit. de Castel). 80 vol. in-18mo. Paris, 1799-1802. Déterville
  (Roret).

Storia naturale de' vegetabili per famiglie con la citazione de la
Classe et dell' ordine di Linnes, e l'indicazione dell' use che si puo
far delle piante nelle arti, nel commercio, nell' agricultura, etc. Con
disegni tratti dal naturale e un genere completo, secondo il sistema
linneano, con de' rinvii alla famiglie naturali, di A. L. Jussieu. Da
G. B. Lamarck e da B. Mirbel. Recata in lingua italiana dal A. Farini
con note ed aggiunte. 3 Tom. de 5-7. Fasc. 1835-41. (Engelmann's
Bibliothec. Hist. nat., 1846.)


FOOTNOTES:

[274] Prepared by M. G. Malloisel, with a few titles added by the
author.




EULOGIES AND BIOGRAPHICAL ARTICLES ON LAMARCK


Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Étienne.--Discours sur Lamarck. (Recueil publié
par l'Institut. 4to. Paris, 1829.)

Cuvier, George.--Éloge de M. de Lamarck, par M. le Baron Cuvier. Lu à
l'Académie des Sciences, le 26 novembre 1832. [No imprint.] Paris.
(Trans. in Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ. No. 39.)

Bourguin, L. B.--Les grands naturalistes français au commencement du
XIXe siècle (Annales de la Société linnéenne du Département de
Maine-et-Loire. 6me Année. Angers, 1863. 8vo. pp. 185-221).
Introduction, pp. 185-193.

Lacaze-Duthiers, H. de.--De Lamarck. (Cours de zoologie au Muséum
d'Histoire naturelle.) Revue scientifique, 1866. Nos. 16-18-19.

Memoir of Lamarck, by J. Duncan. See Jardine (Sir W.), Bart., The
Naturalist's Library. Vol. 36, pp. 17-63. Edinburgh, 1843.

Quatrefages, A. de.--Charles Darwin et ses précurseurs français. Étude
sur le transformisme. Paris, 1870. 8vo. pp. 378.

Martins, Charles.--Un naturaliste philosophe. Lamarck, sa vie et ses
oeuvres. Extrait de la Revue des Deux Mondes. Livraison du 1er mars
1873. Paris.

Haeckel, Ernst.--Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck.
Vortrag in der ersten öffentlichen Sitzung der fünf und fünfzigsten
Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu Eisenach am
18 September 1882. Jena, 1882. 8vo. pp. 64.

Perrier, Edmond.--La philosophie zoologique avant Darwin. Paris, 1884.
pp. 292.

Perrier, Edmond.--Lamarck et le transformisme actuel. (Extrait du volume
commémoratif du Centenaire de la fondation du Muséum d'Histoire
naturelle.) Paris, 1893. Folio. pp. 61.

Bourguignat, J. R.--Lamarck, J. B. P. A. de Monnet de. (Biographical
sketch, with a partial bibliography of his works, said to have been
prepared by M. Bourguignat.) Revue biographique de la Société
malacologique de France. Paris, 1886. pp. 61-85. With a portrait after
Vaux-Bidon.

Mortillet, Gabriel de.--Lamarck. Par G. de Mortillet. (L'Homme, IV,
No. 1. 10 jan. 1887. pp. 1-8.) With portrait and handwriting, including
autograph of Lamarck.

Mortillet, Gabriel de, and others.--Lamarck. Par un groupe de
transformistes, ses disciples. (Reprinted from L'Homme, IV. Paris, 1887.
8vo. pp. 31.) With portrait and figures.

Mortillet, Gabriel de.--Réunion Lamarck. (La Société, l'École et le
Laboratoire d'Anthropologie de Paris, à l'Exposition universelle de
Paris.) Paris, 1889. pp. 72-84.

Mortillet, Adrien de.--Recherches sur Lamarck (including acte de
naissance, acte de décès, and letter from M. Mondière regarding his
place of burial). L'Homme, IV, No. 10. Mai 25 1887. pp. 289-295. With
portrait and view of the house he lived in. On p. 620, a note referring
to a movement to erect a monument to Lamarck.

Giard, Alfred.--Leçon d'ouverture du cours de l'évolution des êtres
organisés. (Bull. sc. de la France et de la Belgique.) Paris, 1888.
pp. 28. Portrait.

Claus, Carl.--Lamarck als Begründer des Descendenzlehre. Wien, 1883.
8vo. pp. 35.

Duval, Mathias.--Le transformiste français Lamarck. (Bull. Soc.
d'Anthropologie de Paris. Tome XII, IIIe Série.) pp. 336-374.

Lamarck.--Les maîtres de la science: Lamarck. Paris, 1892. G. Masson,
Éditeur. 12mo. pp. 98.

Hamy, E. T.--Les derniers jours du Jardin du Roi et la fondation du
Muséum d'Histoire naturelle. pp. 40. (Extrait du volume commémoratif du
Centenaire de la fondation du Muséum d'Histoire naturelle.) Paris,
10 juin 1893. Folio. pp. 162. Paris, 1893.

Osborn, H. F.--From the Greeks to Darwin. An outline of the development
of the evolution idea. New York. 1894. 8vo. pp. 259.

Houssay, Frédéric.--Lamarck, son oeuvre et son esprit. Revue
encyclopédique. Année 1897. pp. 969-973. Paris, Librairie Larousse.

Hermanville, F. J. F.--Notice biographique sur Lamarck. Sa vie et ses
oeuvres. Beauvais, 1898. 8vo. pp. 45. Portrait, after Thorel-Perrin.

Packard, A. S.--Lamarck, and Neo-Lamarckism. (The Open Court. Feb.,
1897.) Chicago, 1897. pp. 70-81.

Packard, A. S.--Lamarck's Views on the Evolution of Man, on Morals, and
on the Relation of Science to Religion. The Monist, Chicago, Oct., 1900.
Chapters XVIII and XIX of the present work.




INDEX


  Adaptation, 322, 367, 392, 412.

  Ærobates, 338.

  Ai, 320.

  Amphibia, 342.

  Ant-eater, 307, 313.

  Antlers, origin of, 316.

  Ant-lion, 337.

  Appetence, doctrine of, 219, 234, 236, 350, 412.

  Aspalax, 307.

  Atrophy, 274, 290, 303, 306, 307, 309, 311, 315, 343.

  Audouin J. V., 63.


  Barus, C., estimate of Lamarck's work in physics, 85.

  Batrachia, 342.

  Battle, law of, 219, 224.

  Beaver, 312.

  Besoins, 245, 270, 274, 281, 295, 302, 324, 334, 346, 350, 352, 412.

  Bird, humming, 313.

  Birds, domestic, atrophy in, 274;
    origin of, 342;
    origin of swimming, 234, 311;
    perching, 234, 312;
    shore, 234, 312.

  Blainville, H. D. de, 62, 64, 135.

  Blumenbach, 138.

  Bolton, H. C., 86.

  Bonnet, C., ideas on evolution, 156;
    germs, 163.

  Bosc, L. A. G., 52.

  Bourguin. L. B., 30, 31.

  Bradypus tridactylus, 320.

  Brain, 337, 360; human, 358.

  Bruguière, J. G., 38, 113.

  Buffalo, 315.

  Buffon, G. L. L., 19, 92, 198;
    factors of evolution, 205, 356;
    views on descent, 201.

  Bulla, 348.


  Callosities, origin of, 203.

  Camelo-pardalis, 316, 351.

  Carnivora, 317; origin of, 343.

  Catastrophism, 105, 117, 126, 146, 153;
    anti-, 105, 114, 153.

  Cave life, 390, 392.

  Cetacea, 343, 409;
    rudimentary teeth of, 307.

  Chain of being, 167, 181, 191, 208, 235, 241, 242.

  Changes in environment, 302;
    local, 301;
    slow, 301.

  Characters, acquired, heredity of, 219, 224, 246, 276, 303, 319.

  Chimpanzee, 367.

  Chiton, 348.

  Circumstances, influence of, 246, 247, 292, 294, 302, 305, 320, 323,
  363, 400.

  Clam, origin of siphon of, 353, 418.

  Classifications, artificial, 282.

  Claws of birds, 312;
    Carnivora, 317, 414.

  Climate, 204, 218, 244, 283, 400, 402, 416.

  Coal, origin of, 113, 122.

  Colonies, animal, 411.

  Colors, animal, 221.

  Competition, 236, 287.

  Conditions, changes of, 292, 294, 302, 305, 310, 400, 407, 414.

  Consciousness, 325, 326, 353.

  Cope, E. D., 383, 389.

  Corals, 115.

  Correlation, law of, 136, 142, 145;
    of tertiary beds, 133.

  Costantin, 416.

  Creation by evolution, 130.

  Crossing, swamping effects of, 246, 320.

  Crustacea, origin of, 341.

  Cunningham, J. T., 409.

  Cuvier, George, 66, 140;
    eulogy on Lamarck, 65;
    first paper, 185.


  Dall, W. H., estimate of Lamarck's work, 196.

  Darkness, influence of, 308.

  Darwin, Charles, 423, 424;
    estimate of Lamarck's views, 73;
    factors tabulated, 356;
    origin of man, compared with Lamarck's, 371;
    views on descent, 217, 407.

  Darwin, Erasmus, factors of evolution, 217, 223, 356;
    life of, 216.

  Daubenton, 19, 26, 29, 136.

  Deer, 316.

  Degeneration, as used by Buffon, 204, 209;
    by Geoffroy, 213;
    by Lamarck, 182, 274, 290.

  Delboeuf's law, 406.

  Desiring, 236, 351, 412.

  Digits, modifications of, 234, 311, 317, 321, 338, 344;
    reduction of, 315.

  Direct action of environment, 324, 409, 410, 414, 416.

  Disuse, 274, 290, 296, 303, 306, 307, 311, 318, 343, 392, 412.

  Dixon, C., 405.

  Dogs, tailless, 220;
    domestication in, 299;
    races of, 299, 304.

  Domestic animals, 274, 304.

  Domestication, effects of, 298, 323.

  D'Orbigny, A., 386.

  Duck, 298, 312, 318.

  Duckbill, 412.


  Earth, great age of, 119;
    revolutions of, 109, 147, 150;
    theory of, 149.

  Earth's interior, 105.

  Effort, 213, 234, 257, 295, 339, 348, 351, 353, 354, 370, 411, 420.

  Egypt, mummied species of, 271, 286.

  Eigenmann, C. H., 393.

  Eimer, G. H. T., 408.

  Elephant, 315.

  Emotion, 353.

  Encasement theory, 162, 218, 222.

  Environment, 214, 410, 417, 421.

  Epigenesis, 156.

  Erosion, 101.

  Evil, 377.

  Evolution, dynamic, 417;
    Lamarck's views on, 322.

  Exercise, 211, 256.

  Existence, struggle for, 207, 237, 287.

  Extinct species, 126, 129, 130.

  Eyeless animals, 307, 309.

  Eyes, 308; of flounder, 313.


  Faujas de St. Fond, 23, 140.

  Feelings, internal, 324, 325, 330, 347.

  Fishes, flat, 313;
    form due to medium, 291;
    origin of, 341.

  Fittest, origin of, 383.

  Flamingo, 250.

  Flounder, 313.

  Flying mammals, origin of, 338.

  Fossilization, 120.

  Fossils, 109, 110, 112, 125, 138;
    deep-sea, 113;
    of Paris basin, 134.

  Frog, 312.

  Function, change of, 394.


  Galeopithecus, 339.

  Gasteropods, 348, 417.

  Generation, spontaneous, 158, 176, 201, 285.

  Geoffroy St. Hilaire, E., 36, 67, 307;
    factors tabulated, 356;
    life, 212;
    views on descent, 215;
    views on species, 213.

  Geographical distribution, 205, 246.

  Geological time, 119, 130, 222.

  Geology, Lamarck's work in, 100.

  Germs of life, first, 259, 261, 268;
    preëxistence of, 162, 218, 222.

  Giard, A., 406, 410.

  Giraffe, 316, 351, 411, 412.

  Goose, 298, 312, 313.

  Granite, origin of, 120, 149.

  Guettard, J. E., 95, 132, 136.

  Gulick, J. T., 405.


  Habits, 235, 247, 295, 303, 305, 314, 316, 321, 323, 324, 340, 394.

  Haeckel, E., 385;
    estimate of Lamarck's theory, 69.

  Hamy, E. T., 19, 22, 25.

  Hearing, 308.

  Henslow, G., 414.

  Heredity, 250, 276, 303, 306, 319, 336;
    of acquired characters, 219, 224, 246, 276, 303, 319.

  Hertwig, R., 282.

  Hoofs, origin of, 315.

  Hooke, Robert, 132.

  Horns, origin of, 316, 354, 393, 409.

  Horse, 274, 304, 315.

  Hutton, James, 99.

  Huxley, T. H., 423, 424;
    estimate of Lamarck's scientific position, 74, 90.

  Hyatt, A., 386, 419.

  Hybridity, 223.

  Hybrids, 284.

  Hydrogéologie, 89.


  Imitation, 361.

  Indirect action of environment, 324, 409.

  Industry, animal, 336.

  Infusoria, 328.

  Insects, wingless, 309.

  Intestines of man, 310.

  Instinct, 223, 286, 330, 331, 332, 349;
    variations in, 335, 337, 349.

  Isolation, 392, 394, 404;
    in man, 320, 369.


  Jacko, 364.

  Jardin des Plantes, 23.

  Jeffries, J. A., 413.

  Jordan, K., 410.

  Juncus bufonius, 252.


  Kangaroo, 318.


  Lacaze-Duthiers, H. de, reminiscences of Lamarck, 75.

  Lakanal, J., 28.

  Lamarck, Cornelie de, 55.

  Lamarck, J. B. de, birth, 6;
    birthplace, 4;
    blindness, 51;
    botanical career, 15, 19, 173;
    burial place, 57;
    death, 51;
    estimates of his life-work, 69;
    factors at evolution, 233, 356;
    founder of palæontology, 124;
    house in Paris, 42;
    meteorology and physical science, 79;
    military career, 11;
    origin of man, 357; parentage, 7;
    share in reorganization of Museum, 24;
    shells, collections of, 46;
    on spontaneous generation, 158;
    style, 179;
    travels, 20;
    views on religion, 372;
    work in geology, 89;
    zoölogical work, 32, 180.

  Lamarckism, relations to Darwinism, 382.

  Land, changes of level of, 107.

  Latreille, P. A., 62.

  Law of battle, 219, 224.

  Laws of evolution, Lamarck's, 303, 346.

  Legs, atrophy of, 290, 309, 343.

  Lemur volans, 339.

  Life, 346;
    conditions of, 292, 294, 302, 305, 310, 400, 414;
    definitions of, 168, 169, 280.

  Light, 410.

  Limbs, atrophy of, 290, 309;
    genesis of, 421;
    of seal, 338, 344;
    whale, 343.

  Lizard, 313.

  Local changes, 301.

  Lyell, Charles, estimate of Lamarck's theory, 71.


  Mammals, aquatic, 343; flying, 338.

  Man, as a check on animal life, 288;
    origin of, 357;
    origin of language, 370;
    origin of his plantigrade feet, 365;
    posture, 362, 368;
    relation to apes, 362;
    segregation of, from apes, 369;
    shape of his skull, 365;
    sign-language, 368;
    speech, origin of, 370;
    swamping effects of crossing in, 320.

  Medium, 214.

  Milieu, 214, 416.

  Mimicry, protective, 220, 221, 225.

  Minerals, growth of, 164.

  Mole, 307.

  Molluscs, 420;
    eyeless, 309;
    gasteropod, 348;
    pelecypod, 417;
    lamellibranch, 418;
    Lamarck's work on, 189.

  Monet, de, 8.

  Monotremes, origin from birds, 342.

  Morals, 372.

  Mortillet, G. de, 30.

  Mountains formed by erosion, 101, 103.

  Muscles, adductor, 418.

  Museum of Natural History, Paris, 34.

  Mya arenaria, 353, 418.

  Myrmecophaga, 307.

  Myrmeleon, 337.


  Nails, 321.

  Natural selection. Inadequacy of, 393, 397, 401, 407, 410, 413, 415,
  421, 423.

  Nature, balance of, 207;
    definition of, 169, 345, 375.

  Neck, elongation of, in birds, 274, 311, 317;
    giraffe, 316, 351;
    ostrich, 317.

  Needs, 245, 270, 274, 281, 295, 302, 324, 334, 346, 350, 351, 352.

  Neodarwinism, 422.

  Neolamarckism, 2, 382, 396, 398, 422.


  Ophidia, atrophy of legs of, 290, 309.

  Organic sense, 325, 327, 336.

  Organs, changes in, 310;
    origin of, precedes their use, 223;
    follows their use, 305, 346;
    atrophy of, 274, 290, 303, 306, 307, 309, 311, 315;
    new production of, 346, 412, 420.

  Orang-outang, 364.

  Osborn, H. S., 403.

  Ostrich, 317.

  Otter, 312.

  Ox, 315.

  Oyster, 419.


  Palæontology, 136;
    Invertebrate, 135, 149.

  Pallas, 137.

  Penchants, 281, 293, 328, 331.

  Perrier, E., 26,411.

  Petaurista, 338.

  Philosophy, moral, Lamarck's, 379.

  Phoca vitulina, 338, 344.

  Phylogeny, 130.

  Pigeons, 298; fantail, 304.

  Planorbis, 387.

  Plants, changes due to cultivation, etc., 251, 267, 274, 283, 296, 297;
    cultivated, 298.

  Population, over-, checks on, 287, 288.

  Preformation, 162, 218, 222.

  Propensities, 281, 293, 328, 335, 349, 351.

  Proteus, 308.

  Pteromys, 339.


  Ranunculus Aquatilis, 251, 300.

  Religion and science, 372.

  Reptiles, 342.

  Revolutions of the earth, 109, 142.

  Rousseau, J. J., 17, 18.

  Roux, W., 421.

  Ruminants, 315.

  Ryder, J. A., 403.


  Science and Religion, 372.

  Sciurus volans, 338.

  Scott, W. B., 403.

  Sea, former existence of, 109, 110, 148.

  Seal, 338, 344.

  Segments, origin of, 421.

  Segregation, in man, 320, 369.

  Selection, mechanical, 410.

  Semper, C., 406.

  Series, animal, branching, 235, 264, 282.

  Serpents, origin of, 290, 309;
    eyes of, 314.

  Sexual selection, 219, 224.

  Shell, bivalve, origin of, 418;
    crustacean, 418.

  Shells, deep-water, 112;
    fossil, 40, 120, 125, 131;
    Lamarckian genera, 183.

  Simia satyrus, 367; troglodytes, 364.

  Sloth, 320.

  Snakes, atrophy of legs of, 290, 309;
    eyes of, 314;
    origin of, 290, 309;
    tongue of, 313.

  Sole, 314.

  Species, Buffon's views on, 201, 221;
    definition of, 252, 255, 262, 267, 275;
    extinct, 126;
    Geoffroy St. Hilaire, views on, 214;
    Lamarck's views on, 183;
    modification of, 131;
    origin of, 131, 283;
    stability of, 271, 277, 401;
    variation in, 278.

  Speech, 370.

  Spencer, Herbert, 371, 382, 384, 415.

  Spermist, 218.

  Sphalax, 307.

  Spines, 251, 393, 414.

  Sponges, 194.

  Squirrel, flying, 338, 339.

  Stimulus, external, 348, 354, 393.

  Struggle for existence, 207, 237, 287.

  Surroundings, 214, 421;
    local, 410.

  Symmetry, radial, 291.

  Swan, 313.


  Tail, of kangaroo, 318.

  Teeth, 307;
    atrophy of, 307;
    in embryo birds, 307;
    in whales, 307.

  Temperature, 410.

  Tentacles of snail, 348, 354.

  Tertiary shells, 110, 125, 133.

  Thought, definition of, 172.

  Time, geological, 119, 130, 222, 236.

  Toes, modifications of, 234, 311, 315, 317, 321, 338, 344.

  Tree, genealogical, first, 130, 181, 192, 193, 349.

  Trout, 403.

  Tubercles, origin of, 394.

  Tunicata, position of, 195.

  Turbot, 314.

  Turtle, sea, 312.


  Uniformitarianism, 130.

  Use, 248, 256, 257, 302, 303, 311, 318, 384, 412.

  Use-inheritance, 219, 224, 246, 276, 303, 319, 346.

  Use originates organs, 276, 311, 346.


  Variability, 407.

  Variation, climatic, 204, 218, 401;
    causes of, 218, 266.

  Varieties, 401.

  Varigny, H. de, 408.

  Vestigial organs, 307, 308.

  Vital force, 167.

  Vitalism, 168.

  Volucella, 338.


  Wagner, M., 404.

  Wallace, A. R., on origin of giraffe's neck, 351.

  Wants, 245, 270, 274, 281, 295, 302, 324, 334, 346, 350, 351, 352.

  Ward, L. F., 422.

  Water, diversified condition of, 290.

  Werner, 97.

  Whale, 307, 343, 409.

  Will, 319, 330, 337.

  Willing, 236, 351, 412.

  Weismann, A., 399.

  Wings, atrophy of, in insects, 309.

  Woodpecker, 313.