Pierre Boitard (1789–1859), an ancient officer reconverted to natural history, is one of the first vulgarizers of a transformist doctrine based on the “metamorphosis” of matter and the “genealogical tree of organization”. Since the mid-1830s, he takes up Le Diable boiteux by René Lesage in order to give a literary form to a novel on the origins, founded on Lamarck. Contesting the system of catastrophes, claimed by Georges Cuvier (“maître Georges”), he carries his reader along into the abyss of time. He covers the lost worlds of the past ages of Earth and shows him the imperative march of Nature, growing more and more complex from period to period, since the formation of our globe 875,000 years ago.