lost my original copy of the "Origin of Species," and had not read the book for some years. I now set about reading it again, and came to the chapter on instinct, where I was horrified to find the following passage:-

"But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and then transmitted by inheritance to the succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been acquired by habit." {23a}

This showed that, according to Mr. Darwin, I had fallen into serious error, and my faith in him, though somewhat shaken, was far too great to be destroyed by a few days' course of Professor Mivart, the full importance of whose work I had not yet apprehended. I continued to read, and when I had finished the chapter felt sure that I must indeed have been blundering. The concluding words, "I am surprised that no one has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck," {23b} were positively awful. There was a quiet consciousness of strength about them which was more convincing than any amount of more detailed explanation. This was the first I had heard of any doctrine of inherited habit as having been propounded by Lamarck (the passage stands in the first edition, "the well-known doctrine of Lamarck," p. 242); and now to find that I had been only busying myself with a stale theory of this long-since exploded charlatan--with my book three parts written and already in the press- -it was a serious scare.

On reflection, however, I was again met with the overwhelming weight of the evidence in favour of structure and habit being mainly due to memory. I accordingly gathered as much as I could second-hand of what Lamarck had said, reserving a study of his "Philosophie Zoologique" for another occasion, and read as much about ants and bees as I could find in readily accessible works. In a few days I saw my way again; and now, reading the "Origin of Species" more closely, and I may say more sceptically, the antagonism between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck became fully apparent to me, and I saw how incoherent and unworkable in practice the later view was in comparison with the earlier. Then I read Mr. Darwin's answers to miscellaneous objections, and was met, and this time brought up, by the passage beginning "In the earlier editions of this work," {24a} &c., on which I wrote very severely in "Life and Habit"; {24b} for I felt by this time that the difference of opinion between us was radical, and that the matter must be fought out according to the rules of the game. After this I went through the earlier part of my book, and cut out the expressions which I had used inadvertently, and which were inconsistent with a teleological view. This necessitated only verbal alterations; for, though I had not known it, the spirit of the book was throughout teleological.

I now saw that I had got my hands full, and abandoned my intention of touching upon "Pangenesis." I took up the words of Mr. Darwin quoted above, to the effect that it would be a serious error to ascribe the greater number of instincts to transmitted habit. I wrote chapter xi. of "Life and Habit," which is headed "Instincts as Inherited Memory"; I also wrote the four subsequent chapters, "Instincts of Neuter Insects," "Lamarck and Mr. Darwin," "Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin," and the concluding chapter, all of them in the month of October and the early part of November 1877, the complete book leaving the binder's hands December 4, 1877, but, according to trade custom, being dated 1878. It will be seen that these five concluding chapters were rapidly written, and this may account in part for the directness with which I said anything I had to say about Mr. Darwin; partly this, and partly I felt I was in for a penny and might as well be in for a pound. I therefore wrote about Mr. Darwin's work exactly as I should about any one else's, bearing in mind the inestimable services he had undoubtedly--and must always be counted to have-- rendered to evolution.

CHAPTER III

How I came to write "Evolution, Old and New"--Mr Darwin's "brief but imperfect" sketch of the opinions of the writers on evolution who had preceded him--The reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with.

Though my book was out in 1877, it was not till January 1878 that I took an opportunity of looking up Professor Ray Lankester's account of Professor Hering's lecture. I can hardly say how relieved I was to find that it sprung no mine upon me, but that, so far as I could gather, Professor Hering and I had come to pretty much the same conclusion. I had already found the passage in Dr. Erasmus Darwin which I quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," but may perhaps as well repeat it here. It runs -

"Owing to the imperfection of language, the offspring is termed a new animal; but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the parent, since a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and, therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production, and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits of the parent system." {26}

When, then, the Athenaeum reviewed "Life and Habit" (January 26, 1878), I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture, and also to the passage just quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The editor kindly inserted my letter in his issue of February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the time, in my power to do.

I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit, in a spirit of scepticism. I read his "brief but imperfect" sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to each one of the writers he had mentioned. First, I read all the parts of the "Zoonomia" that were not purely medical, and was astonished to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on Erasmus Darwin, "HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY WITH REGARD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIVING WORLD" {27} (italics in original).

This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could "hardly be said to have made any real advance upon his predecessors." Still more was I surprised at remembering that, in the first edition of the "Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much as named; while in the "brief but imperfect" sketch he was dismissed with a line of half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled tribute of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the utmost he was entitled to. "It is curious," says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the middle of a note in the smallest possible type, "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"; this was all he had to say about the founder of "Darwinism," until I myself unearthed Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and put his work fairly before the present generation in "Evolution, Old and New." Six months after I had done this, I had the satisfaction of seeing that Mr. Darwin had woke up to the propriety of doing much the same thing, and that he had published an interesting and charmingly written memoir of his grandfather, of which more anon.

Not that Dr. Darwin was the first to catch sight of a complete theory of evolution. Buffon was the first to point out that, in view of the known modifications which had been effected among our domesticated animals and cultivated plants, the ass and the horse should be considered as, in all probability, descended from a common ancestor; yet, if this is so, he writes--if the point "were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced in the course of direct descent from another species; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse, then there is no further limit to be set to the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong in supposing that, with sufficient time, she has evolved all other organised forms from one primordial type" {28a} (et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a su tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises).

This, I imagine, in spite of Professor Huxley's dictum, is contributing a good deal to the general doctrine of evolution; for though Descartes and Leibnitz may have thrown out hints pointing more or less broadly in the direction of evolution, some of which Professor Huxley has quoted, he has adduced nothing approaching to the passage from Buffon given above, either in respect of the clearness with which the conclusion intended to be arrived at is pointed out, or the breadth of view with which the whole ground of animal and vegetable nature is covered. The passage referred to is only one of many to the same effect, and must be connected with one quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," {28b} from p. 13 of Buffon's first volume, which appeared in 1749, and than which nothing can well point more plainly in the direction of evolution. It is not easy, therefore, to understand why Professor Huxley should give 1753-78 as the date of Buffon's work, nor yet why he should say that Buffon was "at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species," {29a} unless, indeed, we suppose he has been content to follow that very unsatisfactory writer, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire (who falls into this error, and says that Buffon's first volume on animals appeared 1753), without verifying him, and without making any reference to him.

Professor Huxley quotes a passage from the "Palingenesie Philosophique" of Bonnet, of which he says that, making allowance for his peculiar views on the subject of generation, they bear no small resemblance to what is understood by "evolution" at the present day. The most important parts of the passage quoted are as follows:-

"Should I be going too far if I were to conjecture that the plants and animals of the present day have arisen by a sort of natural evolution from the organised beings which peopled the world in its original state as it left the hands of the Creator? . . . In the outset organised beings were probably very different from what they are now--as different as the original world is from our present one. We have no means of estimating the amount of these differences, but it is possible that even our ablest naturalist, if transplanted to the original world, would entirely fail to recognise our plants and animals therein." {29b}

But this is feeble in comparison with Buffon, and did not appear till 1769, when Buffon had been writing on evolution for fully twenty