Empedocles tries to explain the genesis of organic beings, and, according to Lange, anticipates the idea of Darwin that adaptations abound, because it is their nature to perpetuate themselves.
Darwin himself spent a large part of the later years of his life in thus extending the new teleology.
Darwin attributes this to the fact that the northern forms were the more powerful (Origin of Species, 5th ed., p.458).
Unfortunately none of these, however, can be compared for singularity with Archaeopteryx or with some American fossil forms next to be noticed, for their particular It is true that from the time of Buffon, though he scorned any regular classification, geographical distribution had been occasionally held to have something to do with systematic arrangement; but the way in which the two were related was never clearly put forth, though people who could read between the lines might have guessed the secret from Darwin's Journal of Researches, as well as from his introduction to the Zoology of the " Beagle" Voyage.
There he continued his literary and scientific labours, enjoying congenial intercourse with such men as Matthew Boulton, James Keir, James Watt and Erasmus Darwin at the periodical dinners of the Lunar Society.
