published works. The Bulletin des sciences naturelles, and the Dictionnaire 
classique des sciences naturelles are only two of a far greater number of 
sources which are still waiting thorough and sympathetic examination. A figure 
like Bory de Saint Vincent, with his interesting attempt to revive 
eighteenth-century materialistic ideas within the context of early 
nineteenth-century debates, surely deserves more than the practically negligible 
consideration he has so far received.
 

Our understanding of Lyell's position in this crucial period of the history of 
biological ideas would be greatly improved through an exhaustive attempt to 
examine not just those lines of thought which eventually triumphed, but how 
different theoretical and philosophical options were strenuously discussed, and 
how the eventual rejection of any form of transformism, even if only for a few 
decades, was not the inevitable and undisputed termination of an often dramatic 
debate.