mes animaux
(Memoires Acad. Sciences_, xii., 1833, pp. 63, 75).

[149] _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Gavials (Memoires du Museum
d'Histoire naturelle_), xii., p. 97 (1825).

[150] _Sur l'Influence du Monde ambiant_, p. 74.

[151] _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, xxxi., p. 487, 1836 (quoted by
I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire); _Histoire nat. gen. des Regnes organiques_,
ii., 2^e partie; also _Resume_, p. 30 (1859).

CHAPTER XIV

THE VIEWS OF ERASMUS DARWIN

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born in 1731, or
twenty-four years after Buffon. He was an English country physician with
a large practice, and not only interested in philosophy, mechanics, and
natural science, but given to didactic rhyming, as evinced by _The
Botanical Garden_ and _The Loves of the Plants_, the latter of which was
translated into French in 1800, and into Italian in 1805. His "shrewd
and homely mind," his powers of keen observation and strong common sense
were revealed in his celebrated work _Zoonomia_, which was published in
two volumes in 1794, and translated into German in 1795-99. He was not a
zooelogist, published no separate scientific articles, and his striking
and original views on evolution, which were so far in advance of his
time, appear mostly in the section on "Generation," comprising 173 pages
of his _Zoonomia_,[152] which was mainly a medical work. The book was
widely read, excited much discussion, and his views decided opposition.
Samuel Butler in his _Evolution, Old and New_ (1879) remarks: "Paley's
_Natural Theology_ is written throughout at the _Zoonomia_, though he
is careful, _moro suo_, never to mention this work by name. Paley's
success was probably one of the chief causes of the neglect into which
the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this country." Dr. Darwin
died in the same year (1802) as that in which the _Natural Theology_ was
published.

Krause also writes of the reception given by his contemporaries to his
"physio-philosophical ideas." "They spoke of his wild and eccentric
fancies, and the expression 'Darwinising' (as employed, for example, by
the poet Coleridge when writing on Stillingfleet) was accepted in
England nearly as the antithesis of sober biological investigation."[153]

The grandson of Erasmus Darwin had little appreciation of the views of
him of whom, through atavic heredity, he was the intellectual and
scientific child. "It is curious," he says in the 'Historical