ain cause of
Lamarck's views soon being lost sight of. They nowhere found a support in
facts; the force of habit played in them an exaggerated and unnatural
_role_; the different illustrations of them--such as the long neck of the
giraffe explained by the permanent and inherited habit of browsing on the
branches of high trees, or the web on the toes of frogs, swimming-birds,
etc., explained by the habit of swimming--were talked about and laughed at
more as curiosities than as worthy of serious consideration.

Only twice after this did the question put by Lamarck attract wider
attention from the learned world. The first time was when, in 1830, the
bitter contest arose at the Academy of Paris, between Cuvier and Etienne
Geoffrey St. Hilaire, the father of Isidor G. St. Hilaire. Geoffrey St.
Hilaire had views similar to Lamarck's, but reached them from quite a
different standpoint--from the observation of the analogy and homology of
the organs; and accounted for the variation of species, not by the use or
disuse of the organs, but on the one hand by the common original type of
the organs, and on the other by the varied influence of the
surroundings--the _monde ambiant_. Lamarck himself seems not to have been
mentioned in this contest. The controversy turned much more on the question
whether in observing nature we can proceed by synthesis and find in the
analogies of the organisms the principles for explaining the real
connection between the different organic forms, or whether the analytical
process is the only correct one, and the synthetical should be discarded.
The solution of it will probably be, that the one process must be
supplemented by the {33} other, as Goethe has already shown in his account
of this controversy; but at that time it was decided in favor of the
analytical principle, and the question was for the time dropped. It came up
for a second time, but created little excitement, in 1844, when an
anonymous work, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," directed the
attention and the interest of scientists again to Lamarck and his doctrine.
But this interest also soon came to an end, until through Darwin's first
publication the half-forgotten man again suddenly attained great honor.

Those who wish to form a closer acquaintance with the different advocates
of the evolution theory before Darwin's appearance, will find them
carefully arranged in the historical sketch which Darwin gives in the
introduction t