Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck’s doctrine has been “so often tried and rejected.” M. Martins, in his edition of the “Philosophie Zoologique,” {235a} said truly that Lamarck’s theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck’s name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; “as if it were possible,” to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} “that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to ‘a fantastic conclusion’ only—to ‘a flighty error,’ and, as has been often said, though not written, to ‘one absurdity the more.’ Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave, yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still saying—commonly too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching. “When will the time come when we may see Lamarck’s theory discussed, and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points, with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to be condemned, let it, at any rate, not be before he has been heard.” Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology. I wish his more fortunate brethren, instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has “been refuted over and over again,” would refer us to some of the best chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck’s weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to replace Mr. Darwin’s doctrine by Lamarck’s. Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:—