The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1883-08-30
Lamark, the Founder Of Trans
fOrmiSm,
Philadelphia Record.l

tnllduelpnld RECORD
Among the great names that rem
dered France illustrious in the last
century, none shine brighter than
those of Culver and Lamarck. Beside
them, or at a time not far distant from
them, lived and worked Geoffroy st.
Hilaire, Blainville, D'Orbigny, Valen-
cienneS, Tournefort, and many others,
all of whom have left an enduring
record of their work. In his lifetime
Culver was honored above all others.
Endowed at once with immense cap
acitieS for work and for managing
men, his name eclipsed that of his con-
temporaries so much that to him has
been given the credit of work not
really performed by him. He was a
man of the times, and took care to keep
on the right side of priests and church.
men. Not so Lamarck, who reached
opinions which the world was not pre-
pared to receive, and who, therefore,
though his writings are full of what
is now generally called evolution, did
not dare, like Darwin, who saw the
time was ripe for such ideas to take
root, to write book devoted to it's
proofs. For this reason he has been
called philosopher, while Darwin is
called a naturalist. The world for
gets that Lamarck wrote Natural
History of Animals without Verte-
br9," and that it was in the study of
an immense quantity of forms, ena-
bling him to bring the chaotic mass
of the lower animals into something
like order, that he found the proofs
of transformism-that is, of the
chlnge of form consequent upon the
interaction of external causes, such
as temperature, nutrition, ETC., upon
the already acquired internal struct-
ure.
The "Regne Animal" called of
Cuvier, was not all the work of that
great pal8ntologist. 1t was Lamarck
who parted the animals with a back
bone from those without, distinguish
ing the arachnids or spider class from
the insects, and both from the crusta-
cea; he who described the echino-
derms (star fishes, sea-urchins, sea-
cucumbers) and the polyps; he, in fact,
who imposed on Cuvier geological re-
forms. Not content with this, he
dared to criticise the pope Of zoology,
and even to disbelieve the theory
of successive revolutions in the order
of things which was then in
vogue-and still has its believers.
He did more than disbelieve; from
fossil shells he drew proof that recent
ones were descended from those of
previous ages. This disbelief in his
favorite theory was probably the cause
of the violent and unjust animosity
of Cuvier. Among the ideas of La
marck are many that are accepted as
facts. He held that the faculties of
animals are purely physical and are in
constant relation with the state of the
organs that are their seat. He ex-
planned the cause of motion in plants;
he considered cellular tissue as the
"gangue" in which all organization is
formed, and he attacked, those timidly
the question of mans animal ances-
try.
What difference in the destinies of
the two men, Darwin and Lamarck,
cries NJ. Berthelemy, in his address en-
title "Pour Lamarck." While Oar
win, surrounded by just admiration,
reposes in royal sepulchre, he whose
idegs Darwin did but develop lived to
see himself abandoned in his old age
and his family in most complete isola-
ton, and is buried in an unknown cor
ner of An unknown cemetery.