Erasmus Darwin

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J. Murray, 1879 - 216 pages
 

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Page 142 - Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car ; Or, on wide-waving wings expanded, bear The flying chariot through the fields of air...
Page 47 - But, wrapp'd in night with terrors all his own, He speaks in thunder when the deed is done. Hear him, ye Senates ! hear this truth sublime, " HE WHO ALLOWS OPPRESSION SHARES THE CRIME.
Page 131 - It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his ' Zoonomia
Page 178 - A great want of one part of the animal " world has consisted in the desire of the " exclusive possession of the females...
Page 184 - ... would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality...
Page 188 - The late Mr. David Hume, in his posthumous works, places the powers of generation much above those of our boasted reason; and adds, that reason can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having observed, that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of organic recrements; as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble, from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone, ironstone, coals,...
Page 177 - In others it has acquired cloven hoofs, as in cows and swine; and whole hoofs in others, as in the horse. While in the bird kind this original living filament has put forth wings instead of arms or legs, and feathers instead of hair.
Page 186 - ... described? And that the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different originally from the other? Or, as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many families of these animals long before other families of them, shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life?
Page 178 - Fifthly, from their first rudiment, or primordium, to the termination of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations, or of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.
Page 171 - I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation or production of the embryon, or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.

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