In a letter addressed to Mantell (dated March 2, 1827), Lyell speaks of having just read Lamarck; he expresses his delight at Lamarck's theories, and his personal freedom from any objections based on theological grounds.

And though he is evidently alarmed at the pithecoid origin of man involved in Lamarck's doctrine, he observes: "But, after all, what changes species may really undergo! How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line beyond which some of the so-called extinct species have never passed into recent ones ?" He also quotes a remarkable passage in the postscript to a letter written to Sir John Herschel in 1836: "In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find that you think it probable it may be carried on through the intervention of intermediate causes." How nearly Lyell was made a convert to evolution by reading Lamarck's works may be seen by the following extracts from his letters, quoted by Huxley: "I think the old 'creation' is almost as much required as ever, but of course it takes a new form if Lamarck's views, improved by yours, are adopted." (To Darwin, March 11, 1863, p.

363.) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "As to Lamarck, I find that Grove, who has been reading him, is wonderfully struck with his book.

I remember that it was the conclusion he (Lamarck) came to about man, that fortified me thirty years ago against the great impression which his argument at first made on my mind--all the greater because Constant Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier forty years ago, told me his conviction 'that Cuvier thought species not real, but that science could not advance without assuming that they were so.'" ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "When I came to the conclusion that after all Lamarck was going to be shown to be right, that we must 'go the whole orang,' I re-read his book, and remembering when it was written, I felt I had done him injustice.
"Even as to man's gradual acquisition of more and more ideas, and then of speech slowly as the ideas multiplied, and then his persecution of the beings most nearly allied and competing with him--all this is very Darwinian.
"The substitution of the variety-making power for 'volition,' 'muscular action,' etc.

(and in plants even volition was not called in), is in some respects only a change of names.