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Since Neo-Lamarckian evolution seemed satisfactorily to avoid many of the difficulties encountered by Darwinian evolutionary theory (even after the rediscovery of Mendel's findings), to accord better with developmentalist social thought pre- and post-1859, to circumvent Darwin's challenge to religious orthodoxy, and to confirm late nineteenth century optimism, Neo-Lamarckism won broad support from contemporary natural and social scientists around the turn of the century. Early modern geography in the United States clearly reflected the influence of a powerful domestic Neo-Lamarckian school of biology, of reform Darwinism in sociology, and of the application of the Teutonic theory to American history. In practice, it was the environmentalist component in Neo-Lamarckism that provided the most coherent theoretical framework for American geography's deterministic interpretation of organic response to …