n to the _Standard Natural History_, we
proposed the term Neolamarckianism, or Lamarckism in its modern form, to
designate the series of factors of organic evolution, and we take the
liberty to quote the passage in which the word first occurs. We may add
that the briefer form, Neolamarckism, is the more preferable.

"In the United States a number of naturalists have advocated what may be
called Neo-Lamarckian views of evolution, especially the conception that
in some cases rapid evolution may occur. The present writer, contrary to
pure Darwinians, believes that many species, but more especially types
of genera and families, have been produced by changes in the environment
acting often with more or less rapidity on the organism, resulting at
times in a new genus, or even a family type. Natural selection, acting
through thousands, and sometimes millions, of generations of animals and
plants, often operates too slowly; there are gaps which have been, so to
speak, intentionally left by Nature. Moreover, natural selection was, as
used by some writers, more an idea than a _vera causa_. Natural
selection also begins with the assumption of a tendency to variation,
and presupposes a world already tenanted by vast numbers of animals
among which a struggle for existence was going on, and the few were
victorious over the many. But the entire inadequacy of Darwinism to
account for the primitive origin of life forms, for the original
diversity in the different branches of the tree of life forms, the
interdependence of the creation of ancient faunas and floras on
geological revolutions, and consequent sudden changes in the environment
of organisms, has convinced us that Darwinism is but one of a number of
factors of a true evolution theory; that it comes in play only as the
last term of a series of evolutionary agencies or causes; and that it
rather accounts, as first suggested by the Duke of Argyll, for the
_preservation_ of forms than for their origination. We may, in fact,
compare Darwinism to the apex of a pyramid, the larger mass of the
pyramid representing the complex of theories necessary to account for
the world of life as it has been and now is. In other words, we believe
in a modified and greatly extended Lamarckianism, or what may be called
Neo-Lamarckianism."

[227] _Studies in the Theory of Descent_. By Dr. August Weismann.
Translated and edited, with notes, by Raphael Meldola. London, 1882.
2 vols.

[228] "The Influen