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.

I got Isidore Geoffroy's "Histoire Naturelle Generale," which Mr.
Darwin commends in the note on the second page of the historical
sketch, as giving "an excellent history of opinion" upon the subject
of evolution, and a full account of Buffon's conclusions upon the
same subject. This at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean.
What he said was that Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent history of
opinion on the subject of the date of the first publication of
Lamarck, and that in his work there is a full account of Buffon's
fluctuating conclusions upon THE SAME SUBJECT. {31} But Mr. Darwin
is a more than commonly puzzling writer. I read what M. Geoffroy had
to say upon Buffon, and was surprised to find that, after all,
according to M. Geoffroy, Buffon, and not Lamarck, was the founder of
the theory of evolution. His name, as I have already said, was never
mentioned in the first edition of the "Origin of Species."

M. Geoffroy goes into the accusations of having fluctuated in his
opinions, which he tells us have been brought against Buffon, and