If Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s name was not mentioned in the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” we should not be surprised at there being no notice taken of Buffon, or at Lamarck’s being referred to only twice—on the first occasion to be serenely waved aside, he and all his works; {9a} on the second, {9b} to be commended on a point of detail. The author of the “Vestiges of Creation” was more widely known to English readers, having written more recently and nearer home. He was dealt with summarily, on an early and prominent page, by a misrepresentation, which was silently expunged in later editions of the “Origin of Species.” In his later editions (I believe first in his third, when 6000 copies had been already sold), Mr. Darwin did indeed introduce a few pages in which he gave what he designated as a “brief but imperfect sketch” of the progress of opinion on the origin of species prior to the appearance of his own work; but the general impression which a book conveys to, and leaves upon, the public is conveyed by the first edition—the one which is alone, with rare exceptions, reviewed; and in the first edition of the “Origin of Species” Mr. Darwin’s great precursors were all either ignored or misrepresented. Moreover, the “brief but imperfect sketch,” when it did come, was so very brief, but, in spite of this (for this is what I suppose Mr. Darwin must mean), so very imperfect, that it might as well have been left unwritten for all the help it gave the reader to see the true question at issue between the original propounders of the theory of evolution and Mr. Charles Darwin himself. That question is this: Whether variation is in the main attributable to a known general principle, or whether it is not?—whether the minute variations whose accumulation results in specific and generic differences are referable to something which will ensure their appearing in a certain definite direction, or in certain definite directions, for long periods together, and in many individuals, or whether they are not?—whether, in a word, these variations are in the main definite or indefinite?