a rechercher l'origine de notre globe il a commence par travailler a
s'instruire de la nature. Mais a l'entendre, ce renversement de l'ordre a
ete pour lui l'effet d'un genie favorable qui l'a conduit pas a pas et
comme par la main aux decouvertes les plus sublimes. C'est en decomposant
la substance de ce globe par tine anatomie exacte de toutes ses parties
qu'il a premierement appris de quelles matieres il etait compose et quels
arrangemens ces memes matieres observaient entre elles. Ces lumieres
jointes a l'esprit de comparaison toujours necessaire a quiconque
entreprend de percer les voiles dont la nature aime a se cacher, ont servi
de guide a notre philosophe pour parvenir a des connoissances plus
interessantes. Par la matiere et l'arrangement de ces compositions il
pretend avoir reconnu quelle est la veritable origine de ce globe que nous
habitons, comment et par qui il a ete forme."-Pp. xix. xx.

But De Maillet was before his age, and as could hardly fail to happen to
one who speculated on a zoological and botanical question before Linnaeus,
and on a physiological problem before Haller, he fell into great errors
here and there; and hence, perhaps, the general neglect of his work.
Robinet's speculations are rather behind, than in advance of, those of De
Maillet; and though Linnaeus may have played with the hypothesis of
transmutation, it obtained no serious support until Lamarck adopted it, and
advocated it with great ability in his "Philosophie Zoologique."

Impelled towards the hypothesis of the transmutation of species, partly by
his general cosmological and geological views; partly by the conception of
a graduated, though irregularly branching, scale of being, which had arisen
out of his profound study of plants and of the lower forms of animal life,
Lamarck, whose general line of thought often closely resembles that of De
Maillet, made a great advance upon the crude and merely speculative manner
in which that writer deals with the question of the origin of living