In this case too the discovery could be seen as a proof of divine omniscience and did not lead to any conflict with religion.
The immutability of species, the diversity of life and adaptation to the environment, in conclusion, are general concepts that were inferred from countless experimental discoveries, and the fact that were seen as products of a divine project does not in the least diminish their importance. Traditional biology was built almost entirely by profoundly religious men, and we must be grateful to them for the ideas that they left us.

Lamarck’s contribution

The great geographical explorations of the 17th and 18th century revealed not only the existence of an entire new world of plants and animals, but also the proofs of immense past geological transformations. Rocks that once had been at the bottom of the sea (as the presence of fossil shells was showing) could be found on mountains’ tops.
Vaste temperate regions were carrying signs that once they were occupied by glaciers, and territories that volcanoes had coverd with lava were now fertile and full of life. The world had clearly had a turbolent history, but even this discovery did not lead to any conflict with tradition. Many, in fact, saw in it the proof of the deluge and of the other catastrophes described in the Bible.
The 18th century, however, was also the century of the Enlightment and in the newly found freedom of thought various theories appeared on the transformation of species, but those speculations were merely a return to the ideas of Greek philosophers, and rejected a priori the ideas of traditional biology without a comparable experimental basis.
Even the great David Hume thought he could demolish one of the pillar of traditional biology (the concept of adaptation) but he was mistaken. His thesis was that adaptation is a false problem because organisms could not live if they were not adapted, which amounts to saying that adaptation does not need an explanation because it is a universal feature of life, while it is precisely because of this that it must be explained.