The leadership in evolution, which for a time had gone to England, was soon given back to France. The new champion of the theory was Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), one of the most pathetic figures in the entire history of zoology. He was a brilliant man, and a skilled zoologist, but because he was courageous, blind, and desperately poor, he suffered little less than martyrdom throughout much of his life, and was given but scant attention by his contemporaries. Baron Cuvier, rich, talented, and a member of the elite of the nation, dominated French zoology. He was a desperate reactionary, holding out for a literal acceptance of the Bible account of special creation, and ridiculed not only the theories of Lamarck, but the whole conception of evolution. For years he blocked the progress along all lines but his own restricted field of anatomy, and waged bitter warfare on anyone who dared to oppose him. And so the blind Lamarck lived in poverty and obscurity, neglected by both scientists and those who knew nothing of zoology. And through this he stood faithfully by the ideas which he believed but was too poor and unknown to defend. Lamarck first held to the old teaching that species were fixed, and could neither change nor be changed. But as he learned more his views changed, and in 1809 he published a book stating his interpretation of evolution. One of his principal ideas was that the effects of the use or disuse of any part of the body may be passed on from parent to children until they finally become parts of the animal’s make-up. It is well known that an arm that is never used becomes weak; that a muscle which is constantly at work becomes strong and large. Lamarck supposed that this increase or decrease in size could be inherited, and thus races with short, thin arms, or heavy powerful muscles could be developed. This is the “theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics” again, first formulated by Erasmus Darwin. Just how much there is to this theory no one has been able to say; some believe it to be worthless while others, particularly those who study fossil animals, think that it possesses a certain amount of truth. Lamarck was, as we have said, a conscientious scientist, and made use of his own accurate observations insofar as this was possible. But when he became blind, dictating his books to his daughter in order to get them written, observation was clearly out of the question. In its stead the great naturalist was forced to rely upon the reports of other observers, and those reports were none too reliable. The obvious weakness of some of his second-hand facts reacted very unfavorably upon the whole work of Lamarck, and gave his opponents abundant weapons for their attacks upon his opinions.