developed the organs, and even called them into existence."
[I have already sufficiently insisted that it is impossible to dispense
with either of these two views. Demand and Supply have gone hand in
hand, each reacting upon the other.] "Otherwise a special act of
creation would be necessary for every different combination of
conditions; and it would be also necessary that the conditions should
remain always constant.

"If this were really so we should have no racehorses like those of
England, nor drayhorses so heavy in build and so unlike the racehorse;
for there are no such breeds in a wild state. For the same reason, we
should have no turnspit dogs with crooked legs, no greyhounds nor
water-spaniels; we should have no tailless breed of fowls nor fantail
pigeons, &c. Nor should we be able to cultivate wild plants in our
gardens, for any length of time we please, without fear of their
changing.

"'Habit,' says the proverb, 'is a second nature'; what possible meaning
can this proverb have, if descent with modification is unfounded?[291]

"As regards the circumstances which give rise to variation, the
principal are climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a
creature's environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most
frequent actions; and lastly, of the means of obtaining food,
self-defence, reproduction, &c., &c."[292]

Here we have absolute agreement with Dr. Erasmus Darwin,[293] except
that there seems a tendency in this passage to assign more effect to the
direct action of conditions than is common with Lamarck. He seems to be
mixing Buffon and Dr. Darwin.

"In consequence of change in any of these respects, the faculties of an
animal become extended and enlarged by use: they become diversified
through the long continuance of the new habits, until little by little
their whole structure and nature, as well as the organs originally
affected, participate in the effects of all these influences, and are
modified to an extent which is capable of transmission to
offspring."[294]

This sentence alone would be sufficient to show that Lamarck was as much
alive as Buffon and Dr. Darwin were before him, to the fact that one of
the most important conditions of an animal's life, is the relation in
which it stands to the other inhabitants of the same neighbourhood--from
which the survival of the fittest follows as a self-evident proposition.
Nothing, therefore, can be more unfounded than the attempt, so
f