This is absolutely the neo-Darwinian doctrine, and a denial of the mainly fortuitous character of the variations in animal and vegetable forms cuts at its root. That Mr. Wallace, after years of reflection, still adhered to this view, is proved by his heading a reprint of the paragraph just quoted from {182b} with the words “Lamarck’s hypothesis very different from that now advanced”; nor do any of his more recent works show that he has modified his opinion. It should be noted that Mr. Wallace does not call his work “Contributions to the Theory of Evolution,” but to that of “Natural Selection.” Mr. Darwin, with characteristic caution, only commits himself to saying that Mr. Wallace has arrived at _almost_ (italics mine) the same general conclusions as he, Mr. Darwin, has done; {182c} but he still, as in 1859, declares that it would be “a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations,” {183a} and he still comprehensively condemns the “well-known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck.” {183b} As for the statement in the passage quoted from Mr. Wallace, to the effect that Lamarck’s hypothesis “has been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject of varieties and species,” it is a very surprising one. I have searched Evolution literature in vain for any refutation of the Erasmus Darwinian system (for this is what Lamarck’s hypothesis really is) which need make the defenders of that system at all uneasy. The best attempt at an answer to Erasmus Darwin that has yet been made is “Paley’s Natural Theology,” which was throughout obviously written to meet Buffon and the “Zoonomia.” It is the manner of theologians to say that such and such an objection “has been refuted over and over again,” without at the same time telling us when and where; it is to be regretted that Mr. Wallace has here taken a leaf out of the theologians’ book. His statement is one which will not pass muster with those whom public opinion is sure in the end to follow. Did Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, “repeatedly and easily refute” Lamarck’s hypothesis in his brilliant article in the _Leader_, March 20, 1852? On the contrary, that article is expressly directed against those “who cavalierly reject the hypothesis of Lamarck and his followers.” This article was written six years before the words last quoted from Mr. Wallace; how absolutely, however, does the word “cavalierly” apply to them! Does Isidore Geoffroy, again, bear Mr. Wallace’s assertion out better? In 1859—that is to say, but a short time after Mr. Wallace had written—he wrote as follows:—