Page 194 - The Miracles of Smell and Taste

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power. Darwin was also aware of this fact and had to state this in his book
The Origin of Species:

Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual differences
or variations occur. 160

Lamarck’s Impact
So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to an-
swer this question from the stand-
point of the primitive understand-
ing of science at that time.
According to the French biologist
Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829),
who lived before Darwin, living

creatures passed on the traits they
acquired during their lifetime to the
next generation. He asserted that
these traits, which accumulated
from one generation to another,
caused new species to be formed.
For instance, he claimed that gi-

Lamarck believed that giraffes evolved
from such animals as antelopes. In his
view, the necks of these grass-eating ani-
mals gradually grew longer, and they
eventually turned into giraffes. The laws
of inheritance discovered by Mendel in
1865 proved that it was impossible for
properties acquired during life to be hand-
ed on to subsequent generations.
Lamarck’s giraffe fairy tale was thus con-
signed to the wastebin of history.
The Miracles of Smell and
Taste