Among the examples of ridicule to which Darwin's ideas have been exposed, we cite one verse from the song of Lord Neaves. His lordship wrote a song with a large number of verses hitting off in jocular vein many of the claims and foibles of his time. In attempting to make fun of Darwin's idea he misses completely the idea of natural selection, but hits upon the principle enunciated by Lamarck, instead. He says:
"A deer with a neck which was longer by half
Than the rest of his family's—try not to laugh—
By stretching and stretching became a giraffe,
Which nobody can deny."
The clever young woman, Miss Kendall, however, in her Song of the Ichthyosaurus, showed clearness in grasping Darwin's idea when she wrote:
"Ere man was developed, our brother,
We swam, we ducked, and we dived,
And we dined, as a rule, on each other.
What matter? The toughest survived."
This hits the idea of natural selection. The other two illustrations miss it, but strike the principle which was enunciated by Lamarck. This confusion between Lamarckism and Darwinism is very wide-spread.
Darwin's book on the Origin of Species, published in 1859, was epoch-making. If a group of scholars were asked to designate the greatest book of the nineteenth century—that is, the book which created the greatest intellectual stir—it is likely that a large proportion of them would reply that it is Darwin's Origin of Species. Its influence was so great in the different domains of thought that we may observe a natural cleavage between the thought in reference to nature between 1859 and all preceding time. His other less widely known books on Animals and Plants Under Domestication, the Descent of Man, etc., etc., are also important contributions to the discussion of his theory. A brief account of Darwin, the man, will be found in Chapter XIX.