Amongst those [works] of the tenth century, of which fragments are now extant, is a system of mineralogy by Avicenna, a physician in whose arrangemen… - Charles Lyell

If, in spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all closely allied species of animals and plants have in like manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for the last three or four thousand years they may have been persistent in character?

So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil... it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental... But it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded.

Lamarck taught not only that species had been constantly undergoing changes from one geological period to another, but that there also had been a progressive advance of the organic world from the earliest to the latest times, from beings of the simplest to those of more and more complex structure and from the lowest instincts up to the highest, and, finally, from brute intelligence to the reasoning powers of Man. The improvement in the grade of being had been slow and continuous, and the human race itself was at length evolved out of the most highly organised and endowed of the inferior mammalia.