nions 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 w