s feathers mixt with black and carnation in the north
parts of Virginia. The Dog-fish of England is the Sharke of the South
Ocean. For if colour or magnitude made a difference of Species, then
were the Negroes, which wee call the Blacke-Mores, _non animalia
rationalia_, not Men but some kind of strange Beasts, and so the giants
of the South America should be of another kind than the people of this
part of the World. We also see it dayly that the nature of fruits are
changed by transplantation."[34]

For information concerning the earliest German writers on evolution, I
turn to Professor Haeckel's 'History of Creation,' and find Goethe's
name to head the list. I do not gather, however, that Goethe added much
to the ideas which Buffon had already made sufficiently familiar.
Professor Haeckel does not seem to be aware of Buffon's work, and quotes
Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year
1796:--"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without
hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes,
amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last,
were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less
in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and
modifies its form by propagation."[35] But these, as we shall see, are
almost Buffon's own words--words too that Buffon insisted on for many
years. Again Professor Haeckel quotes Goethe as writing in the year
1807:--

"If we consider plants and animals in their most imperfect condition,
they can hardly be distinguished." This, however, had long been insisted
upon by Bonnet and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the first of whom was a
naturalist of world-wide fame, while the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Darwin had
been translated into German between the years 1795 and 1797, and could
hardly have been unknown to Goethe in 1807, who continues: "But this
much we may say, that the creatures which by degrees emerge as plants
and animals out of a common phase where they are barely distinguishable,
arrive at perfection in two opposite directions, so that the plant in
the end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is immovable and
stiff, the animal in man who possesses the greatest elasticity and
freedom." Professor Haeckel considers this to be a remarkable passage,
but I do not think it should cause its author to rank among the founders
of the evolution theory, though he may justly claim to have be