De Quatrefages and De Varigny have maintained that the botanist Naudin
stated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1852. He explains
very clearly the process of artificial selection, and says that in the
garden we are following Nature's method. "We do not think that Nature has
made her species in a different fashion from that in which we proceed
ourselves in order to make our variations." But, as Darwin said, "he does
not show how selection acts under nature." Similarly it must be noted in
regard to several pre-Darwinian pictures of the struggle for existence
(such as Herder's, who wrote in 1790 "All is in struggle...each one for
himself" and so on), that a recognition of this is only the first step in
Darwinism.

Profs. E. Perrier and H.F. Osborn have called attention to a remarkable
anticipation of the selection-idea which is to be found in the speculations
of Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire (1825-1828) on the evolution of modern
Crocodilians from the ancient Teleosaurs. Changing environment induced
changes in the respiratory system and far-reaching consequences followed.
The atmosphere, acting upon the pulmonary cells, brings about
"modifications which are favourable or destructive ('funestes'); these are
inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organisation of the
animal because if these modifications lead to injurious effects, the
animals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a somewhat
different form, a form changed so as to be adapted to (a la convenance) the
new environment."

Prof. E.B. Poulton ("Science Progress", New Series, Vol. I. 1897. "A
Remarkable Anticipation of Modern Views on Evolution". See also Chap. VI.
in "Essays on Evolution", Oxford, 1908.) has shown that the anthropologist
James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) must be included, even in spite of
himself, among the precursors of Darwin. In some passages of the second