 By the early nineteenth century, one can follow several lines of reflection admitting some form of species transformism. In the Germanies, Herder’s reflections formed a major ingredient in the development of German Naturphilosophie and “Romantic” science that was expanded in the writings of Johann Goethe (1749–1832), Friederich Schelling (1775–1854), Gottfried Treviranus (1776–1837) and several others who advocated some version of a historically progressive philosophy of nature with at least the “development” if not actual transformism of species in time (Zammito 2018a: chps. 8,9,11; R. J. Richards 2002: chps. 2,3,8). In the British Isles in the same period, the reflections in the second volume of his Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life (1794–1796) of Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, offered a theory of species development based on a concept of dynamic living matter. With the acknowledgment of these multiple lines of reflection on the issues, each of which can be followed out in detail, the institutional development of these discussions of species transformism in relation to geological history is most easily followed through their French discussions, and these French reflections were particularly important for the early formation of Charles Darwin’s own theoretical developments.