Darwin's Predecessors

Evolution in Modern though
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22430/22430-h/22430-h.htm#II

EVOLUTION IN MODERN THOUGHT BY HAECKEL, THOMSON, WEISMANN AND OTHERS

p.21 "...Prof. E. B. Poulton[31] has shown that the anthropologist James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) must be included even in spite of himself among the precursors of Darwin. In some passages of the second edition of his Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (1826), he certainly talks evolution and anticipates Prof. Weismann in denying the transmission of acquired characters. He is, however, sadly self-contradictory and his evolutionism weakens in subsequent editions—the only ones that Darwin saw. Prof. Poulton finds in Prichard's work a recognition of the operation of Natural Selection. "After inquiring how it is that 'these varieties are developed and preserved in connexion with particular climates and differences of local situation,' he gives the following very significant answer: 'One cause which tends to maintain this relation is obvious. Individuals and families, and even whole colonies perish and disappear in climates for which they are, by peculiarity of constitution, [21]not adapted. Of this fact proofs have been already mentioned.'" Mr. Francis Darwin and Prof. A. C. Seward discuss Prichard's "anticipations" in More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I. p. 43, and come to the conclusion that the evolutionary passages are entirely neutralised by others of an opposite trend. There is the same difficulty with Buffon....."

NOTES1: "...Individuals and colonies perish in climates for which they are ... not adapted....."

The fact they are dead implies they weren't adapted. Perish and "not adapted" says the same thing twice, it alludes to the same fact but doesn't independently derive the actual reason they died. Tautological thinking results in confusing cause with effect.