of - or opposition to - his ideas in France during the first half of the 
nineteenth century.
 

Evolutionary theories discussed in Europe before the appearance of The Origin of 
Species have also been the object of a number of studies. For the Italian case, 
the work of Pietro Omodeo on Giosué Sangiovanni has already been referred to. 
Further studies, by Giovan Battista Benasso, Pietro Passarin d'Entrèves, Giulia 
Sella and myself, have demonstrated the persistence of a Lamarckian tradition 
(often hidden beneath a veil of religious and political censure) in Italian 
natural sciences. As I have had occasion to show, it is possible to trace a 
direct line linking Franco Andrea Bonelli, who frequently met Lamarck in 1810, 
and corresponded with him afterwards, to the first translators of Darwin in 
Italy (9).
 

For the case of England, in a series of remarkable essays Adrian Desmond has 
analysed the great vitality of transformist conceptions of Lamarckian 
inspiration within circles of radical doctors and anatomists. He also 
reconstructed the at times violent reactions elicited by the penetration of 
Lamarckism in official scientific societies (10).  The great success of a work 
such as the 

(9) G.B. Benasso, "Materiali per una storia dell'evoluzionismo italiano da 
Bonelli a De Filippi, 1811-1864" in Atti della Accademia Roveretana degli 
Agiati, xiv-xv, 1976, pp. 5-106. P. Corsi, " 'Darwinians' et 'lamarckiens' in 
Turin (1812-1894)" in De Darwin au darwinisme: science et idéologie, Y. Conry 
éd., Paris, Vrin, 1983, pp. 49-66; "Lamarck en Italie", dans Revue d'histoire 
des sciences, 37, 1984, pp. 47-64 and "Recent studies of French and Italian 
reactions to Darwin", in The Darwinian Heritage, D. Kohn éd., Princeton, 
Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 711-729. Passarin d'Entrèves, P. et Sella 
Gentile, G., "Franco Andrea Bonelli zoologo trasformista", Studi Piemontesi,  
XIV, 1985, pp. 34-48.
 
(10) Desmond, A., "Robert E. Grant: The Social Predicament of a Pre-Darwinian 
Transmutationist", in Journal of the History of Biology, 17, 1984, pp. 189-223; 
"Richard Owen's Reaction to transmutation in the 1830s", in The British Journal 
for the History of Science, 18, 1985, pp. 25-50; "Artisan Resistance and 
Evolution in Britain, 1919-1848, in Osiris, 3, 1987, pp. 77-110; "Lamarckism and 
Democracy: Corporations, Corruption, and Comparative Anatomy in the 1830s", in 
J.R. Moore, ed., History, Humanity and Evolution: Essays in Honour of John C. 
Greene, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 99-130; The Politics of 
Evolution. Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London, Chicago, Chicago 
University Press, 1989.