James Duncan

“ If his principles were once admitted, they would not only produce the effects he ascribes to them, but it would be a matter of surprise that natural productions are not infinitely more diversified than they really are, for nothing more is necessary than time and circumstances for any one animal form to be transformed into any other,—for a monad or a polypus to become indifferently a frog, an eagle, an elephant, or a man. ”

“ If the imagination was taxed to invent, or to concentrate into one figure all that was splendid, lovely, or rare in the insect world, Nature would far exceed the poor invention of man by the production of this incomparably splendid creature ”

“ The intellectual faculties of animals, Lamarck regards as entirely the result of organization. Even in the case of the most perfect of them, the human species, there is no distinct recognition of a spiritual substance derived from heaven; and all intellectual phenomena whatever, are ascribed to some physical cause. Nature, he conceives, offers nothing cognizable by us but body; the movements, changes, and properties of bodies, form the only field open to our observation, and the only source of real knowledge and useful truths11. ”

“ The more simple bodies, such as a monad or a polypus, are easily formed; and this being the case, it is easy to conceive how, in the lapse of time, animals of more complex structure should be produced, for it must be admitted as a fundamental law, that the production of a new organ in an animal body results from any new want or desire which it may experience. The first effort of a being just beginning to develope itself, must be to procure the means of subsistence, and hence in time there came to be produced a stomach or alimentary cavity. ”

“ The climate has conspired with the art of embalming to preserve bodies from corruption, and we can now satisfy ourselves, by our own eyes, what was the condition of many species three thousand years ago. It is difficult to restrain the transports of our imagination, when we behold thus preserved, with their minutest bones, the smallest portions of their skin, and in every respect most perfectly recognizable, many animals, which at Thebes or Memphis, two or three thousand years ago, had their own priests and altars. ”

“ The principle of no compound is ever in a natural state, but always more or less modified: as, however, it is not agreeable to reason that a substance should have a tendency to depart from its natural condition, it must be concluded, that combinations are not produced by Nature, but that, on the contrary, she tends unceasingly to destroy the combinations which exist, and each principle of a compound body tries to disengage itself according to the degree of its energy. From this tendency, favoured by the presence of water, dissolutions result: affinities have no influence ”

“ All this power Lamarck distinctly admits has been delegated to Nature by the Deity, and among other errors which he conceives to have attached to the ideas which have been entertained regarding Nature, he refutes the notion that Nature is the Deity himself. “Strange occurrence! that the watch should have been confounded with its maker, the work with its author. Assuredly this idea is illogical and unfit to be maintained. The power which has created Nature, has, without doubt, no limits, cannot be restricted in its will or made subject to others, and is independent of all law. ”

“ Though the intellectual part acts by the brain and nerves, yet the brain and nerves, however ample, however developed, are not the intellect, nor an intellectual substance, but only its instrument, fitted for the passage of the prime messenger of the soul, its nervous fluid or power to every motive organ. It is a substance calculated to convey instantaneously that subtile agent, by which spirit can act upon body, wherever the soul bids it to go and enables it to act. ”

“ The remarkable superiority in size and beauty of most tropical productions over those of temperate regions, is scarcely more strikingly exemplified in any department of nature than in this. The most richly ornamented of our native species, and we possess many of great beauty, appear insignificant when contrasted with those of Brazil and Eastern Asia. ”

“ It must hence appear, that what are called species do not exist in nature; that the constancy of races to which that name has been given, can only be temporary and not absolute, although they would no doubt continue the same as long as the circumstances which effect them undergo no change, and they are not forced to alter their habitudes. 36 It is susceptible of demonstration, that if species had an absolute constancy, there would be no varieties, but naturalists cannot help acknowledging that such exist5. ”

“ Even though it should be very difficult to verify the characters taken from the larva, this is no reason why we should abstain from employing them. It is not merely from the fruit that botanists obtain their characters, but likewise from the flower, and even from the first developement of the vegetable embryo. The flower is to the plant what the caterpillar is to the lepidopteron, and the different modes of metamorphosis have as much value as those of inflorescence. ”

“ The male of the species above referred to is of a deep black colour on the surface, with a silky gloss, sprinkled with numerous small blue spots; the female is larger, and besides markings similar to those of the male, has a broad white band in the middle of each of the superior wings lying obliquely, and terminating in a point. The whole of the under side, in both sexes, is shining brown with a very slight tinge of green; the hinder wings with ten rounded bright red spots, three near the base, two on the interior edge, and five forming a row on the hinder margin towards the anal angle. ”

“ By embalming with so much care the brutes which were the objects of their foolish adoration, that extraordinary and capricious people have left us, in their sacred grottoes, almost complete cabinets of zoology. ”

“ Of the four quarters of the globe, Europe is poorest in these insects; and next to it is Africa. Asia, including the great islands of the Indian Archipelago and America, are both exceedingly rich. Of the former, the islands seem to be much more prolific than the continent; they are the exclusive haunts of the gigantic Ornithoptera, several of the largest and most richly coloured of the Pierides, as well as several of the most remarkable species of the genus Morpho. South America produces a greater number than any other country ”

“ The head and body are very thick; abdomen short; eyes large and salient; palpi very short, the articulations very indistinct; antennæ rather long, thickening at the extremity into a club which is slightly curved upwards. The anterior wings are nearly hyaline, and have the discoidal cell closed; the posterior folded longitudinally, and each drawn out into a very long tail curved at the extremity. The expansion of the wings, in the only known species, is about an inch and a half; the inner half of the superior pair black, traversed in the middle by a pretty broad green band ”

“ How indispensable unlimited time is to give an air of plausibility to Lamarck’s theory, is strikingly evinced by the fact, of which he was perfectly aware, that we have the means of comparing animals that lived upwards of two or three thousand years ago, with the same species as they exist at present, and the conformity between them is found to be complete. ”

“ It will no doubt be objected to us, that it is illogical to deduce characters except from the animals we are attempting to classify. We reply, that by following any other plan we must despair of attaining to a natural method. Besides, it is not necessary to be acquainted with the caterpillars of every species; it is sufficient to study a caterpillar and chrysalis of Vanessa or Pieris to have an exact idea of those of the two genera. ”

“ When flying under the blaze of a tropical sun, the brilliancy of the surface, as contrasted with the dark hue of the under side, as they are alternately displayed, must render them very striking objects. Most of them are from South America, but a few occur in the eastern parts of India and the great islands of the adjacent Archipelago. ”

“ If we even take a somewhat numerous genus belonging at the same time to several different countries, we find species which form a passage to other races proper to each of these countries. For example, the genus Pieris of Latreille offers species in America (genus Leptalis) which bear a perfect resemblance to the Heliconii in their colour, the length of their bodies, and narrowness of the wings. Others of the same country (genus Euterpe) insensibly unite with that division of American Papiliones which is of a black colour with red spots ”

“ It appeared to them, that a government which protects the sciences, ought to have provided for the wants of a celebrated individual; but their esteem for him was doubled, when they saw the fortitude with which the illustrious old man bore up against the assaults both of fortune and of nature. ”

“ The transmutability of species is a point which has been maintained by many naturalists besides Lamarck, and the reasons they have adduced in support of their opinions are so various, that the full consideration of them would be inconsistent with our present purpose. It may be assumed as capable of most satisfactory proof, that the mutations which species undergo in accommodating themselves to a change of external circumstances, have a definite limit, and are regulated by constant laws ”

“ Genus MORPHO.
The butterflies arranged together under the above name are, in many respects, the most remarkable of any to which our attention has yet been directed. In size they are superior to all the other diurnal lepidopterous tribes, except the Ornithoptera, and many of them rival even that conspicuous group in their dimensions. Although surpassed by many others of their tribe in elegance of form and harmonious blending of colours, they afford examples of as rich tints as are to be found in any other natural objects. ”

“ If we observe that the forms of the parts of animals are always perfect when viewed in relation to their use, as is really the case, it is not to be inferred that it is the form of the parts which has led them to be employed in a certain way, as zoologists assert, but that it is, on the contrary, the need of action which has produced the peculiar parts, and it is the employment of these parts which has developed them, and established a proper relation between them and their functions. ”

“ Whatever changes circumstances may have produced in individuals, are all preserved by generation, and transmitted to new individuals emanating from those which have undergone these changes. Unless this were the case, Nature could never have introduced the diversity among animals which we now witness, nor a progression in the composition of their organs and faculties6.
Such is Lamarck’s theory of life, and manner of accounting for the innumerable variety of forms in which living nature now appears. ”