ll after he had completed his 'Philosophie
Anatomique,' and except through lectures delivered orally to the museum
and the faculty, it was not published till 1828; nor again in the work
then published do we find his theory in its neatest expression and
fullest development."

Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire tells us in a note that the work referred
to as first putting his father's views before the public in a printed
form, was a report to the Academy of Sciences on a memoir by M. Roulin;
but that before this report some indications of them are to be found in
a paper on the Gavials, published in 1825. Their best rendering,
however, and fullest development is in several memoirs, published in
succession, between the years 1828 and 1837.

"This doctrine," he continues, "is diametrically opposed to that of
Cuvier, and is not entirely the same as Lamarck's. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
refutes the one, he restrains and corrects the other. Cuvier, according
to him, sums up against the facts, while Lamarck goes further than they
will bear him out. Essentially however on questions of this nature he is
a follower of Lamarck, and took pleasure on several occasions in
describing himself as the disciple of his illustrious _confrere_."[323]

I have been unable to detect any substantial difference of opinion
between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Lamarck, except that the first
maintained that a line must be drawn somewhere--and did not draw
it--while the latter said that no line could be drawn, and therefore
drew none. Mr. Darwin is quite correct in saying that Geoffroy St.
Hilaire "relied chiefly on the conditions of life, or the 'monde
ambiant,' as the cause of change." But this is only Lamarck over again,
for though Lamarck attributes variation directly to change of habits in
the creature, he is almost wearisome in his insistence on the fact that
the habit will not change, unless the conditions of life also do so.
With both writers then it is change in the relative positions of the
exterior circumstances, and of the organism, which results in variation,
and finally in specific modification.

Here is another sketch of Etienne Geoffroy, also by his son Isidore.

In 1795, while Lamarck was still a believer in immutability, Etienne
Geoffroy St. Hilaire "had ventured to say that species might well be
'degenerations from a single type,'" but, though he never lost sight of
the question, he waited more than a quarter of a century before passing
from me