Call a new variety a new creation, one may say of the former, as of the latter, what you say when you observe that the creationist explains nothing, and only affirms 'it is so because it is so.' "Lamarck's belief in the slow changes in the organic and inorganic world in the year 1800 was surely above the standard of his times, and he was right about progression in the main, though you have vastly advanced that doctrine.

As to Owen in his 'Aye Aye' paper, he seems to me a disciple of Pouchet, who converted him at Rouen to 'spontaneous generation.' "Have I not, at p.

412, put the vast distinction between you and Lamarck as to 'necessary progression' strongly enough ?" (To Darwin, March 15, 1863.

_Lyell's Letters_, ii., p.

365.) Darwin, in the freedom of private correspondence, paid scant respect to the views of his renowned predecessor, as the following extracts from his published letters will show: "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progression,' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals,' etc.
But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so." (Darwin's _Life and Letters_, ii., p.