But this is feeble in comparison with Buffon, and did not appear till 1769, when Buffon had been writing on evolution for fully twenty years with the eyes of scientific Europe upon him. Whatever concession to the opinion of Buffon Bonnet may have been inclined to make in 1769, in 1764, when he published his “Contemplation de la Nature,” and in 1762 when his “Considérations sur les Corps Organes” appeared, he cannot be considered to have been a supporter of evolution. I went through these works in 1878 when I was writing “Evolution, Old and New,” to see whether I could claim him as on my side; but though frequently delighted with his work, I found it impossible to press him into my service. The pre-eminent claim of Buffon to be considered as the father of the modern doctrine of evolution cannot be reasonably disputed, though he was doubtless led to his conclusions by the works of Descartes and Leibnitz, of both of whom he was an avowed and very warm admirer. His claim does not rest upon a passage here or there, but upon the spirit of forty quartos written over a period of about as many years. Nevertheless he wrote, as I have shown in “Evolution, Old and New,” of set purpose enigmatically, whereas there was no beating about the bush with Dr. Darwin. He speaks straight out, and Dr. Krause is justified in saying of him “_that he was the first who proposed and persistently carried out a well-rounded theory_” of evolution. I now turned to Lamarck. I read the first volume of the “Philosophie Zoologique,” analysed it and translated the most important parts. The second volume was beside my purpose, dealing as it does rather with the origin of life than of species, and travelling too fast and too far for me to be able to keep up with him. Again I was astonished at the little mention Mr. Darwin had made of this illustrious writer, at the manner in which he had motioned him away, as it were, with his hand in the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” and at the brevity and imperfection of the remarks made upon him in the subsequent historical sketch.