FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[81]Although Defrance (born 1759, died in 1850) aided Lamarck in collecting tertiary shells, his earliest palæontological paper (on Hipponyx) did not appear until the year 1819.[82]In a footnote Lamarck refers to an unpublished work, which probably formed a part of theHydrogéologie, published in the following year. “Voyez à ce sujet mon ouvrage intitulé: De l’influence du mouvement des eaus sur la surface du globe terrestre, et des indices du déplacement continuel du bassin des mers, ainsi que de son transport successif sur les différens points de la surface du globe” (no date).[83]It should be stated that the first observer to inaugurate the comparative method was that remarkable forerunner of modern palæontologists, Steno the Dane, who was for a while a professor at Padua. In 1669, in his treatise entitledDe Solido intra Solidum naturaliter contento, which Lyell translates “On gems, crystals, and organic petrefactions inclosed within solid rocks,” he showed, by dissecting a shark from the Mediterranean, that certain fossil teeth found in Tuscany were also those of some shark. “He had also compared the shells discovered in the Italian strata with living species, pointed out their resemblance, and traced the various gradations from shells merely calcined, or which had only lost their animal gluten, to those petrefactions in which there was a perfect substitution of stony matter” (Lyell’sPrinciples, p. 25). About twenty years afterwards, the English philosopher Robert Hooke, in a discourse on earthquakes, written in 1688, but published posthumously in 1705, was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known; but he doubted whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he leans to the opinion that species had been lost. Some species, he observes with great sagacity, “arepeculiar to certain places, and not to be found elsewhere.” Turtles and such large ammonites as are found in Portland seem to have been the productions of hotter countries, and he thought that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone (Lyell’sPrinciples).Gesner the botanist, of Zurich, also published in 1758 an excellent treatise on petrefactions and the changes of the earth which they testify. He observed that some fossils, “such as ammonites, gryphites, belemnites, and other shells, are either of unknown species or found only in the Indian and other distant seas” (Lyell’sPrinciples).Geikie estimates very highly Guettard’s labors in palæontology, saying that “his descriptions and excellent drawings entitle him to rank as the first great leader of the palæontological school of France.” He published many long and elaborate memoirs containing brief descriptions, but without specific names, and figured some hundreds of fossil shells. He was the first to recognize trilobites (Illænus) in the Silurian slates of Angers, in a memoir published in 1762. Some of his generic names, says Geikie, “have passed into the languages of modernpalæontology,”and one of the genera of chalk sponges which he described has been named after him,Guettardia. In his memoir “On the accidents that have befallen fossil shells compared with those which are found to happen to shells now living in the sea” (Trans. Acad. Roy. Sciences, 1765, pp. 189, 329, 399) he shows that the beds of fossil shells on the land present the closest possible analogy to the flow of the present sea, so that it becomes impossible to doubt that the accidents, such as broken and worn shells, which have affected the fossil organisms, arose from precisely the same causes as those of exactly the same nature that still befall their successors on the existing ocean bottom. On the other hand, Geikie observes that it must be acknowledged “that Guettard does not seem to have had any clear ideas of the sequence of formations and of geological structures.”[84]Scheuchzer’s “Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes” (Piscium Querelae et Vindiciae, Germany, 1708), “a work of zoölogical merit, in which he gave some good plates and descriptions of fossil fish” (Lyell). Gesner’s treatise onpetrefactionspreceded Lamarck’s work in this direction, as did Brander’sFossillia Hantoniensia, published in 1766, which contained “excellent figures of fossil shells from the more modern (or Eocene) marine strata of Hampshire. In his opinion fossil animals and testacea were, for the most part, of unknown species, and of such as were known the living analogues now belonged to southern latitudes” (Lyell’sPrinciples, eighth edition, p. 46).[85]Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, vi., 1805, pp. 222–228.[86]Recueil de Planches des Coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris(Paris, 1823). There are added two plates of fossil fresh-water shells (twenty-one species of Limnæa, etc.) by Brard, with sixty-two figures.[87]Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Biographies scientifiques, par Ducrotay de Blainville (Paris, 1890, p. 446).[88]“Mémoire sur des os fossiles découverts auprès de la ville d’Aix en Provence” (Mém. Acad. Sc., Paris, 1760, pp. 209–220).[89]“Sur un os d’une grosseur énorme qu’on a trouvé dans une couche de glaise au milieu de Paris; et en général sur les ossemens fossiles qui ont appartenu à de grands animaux” (Journal de Physique, tome xvii., 1781. pp. 393–405). Lamanon also, in 1780, published in the sameJournalan article on the nature and position of the bones found at Aix en Provence; and in 1783 another article on the fossil bones belonging to gigantic animals.[90]Hollmann had still earlier published a paper entitledDe corporum marinorum, aliorumque peregrinorum in terra continente origine(Commentarii Soc. Goettingen., tom. iii., 1753, pp. 285–374).[91]Novi Commentarii Soc. Sc. Goettingensis, tom. ii.,Commentat., tom. i.[92]His first palæontological article appears to have been one entitledBeiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Vorwelt(Lichtenberg,Voigt’s Magaz., Bd. vi., S. 4, 1790, pp. 1–17). I have been unable to ascertain in which of his publications he describes and names the cave-bear.[93]Specimen archæologia telluris terrarumque imprimis Hannoveranæ, pts. i., ii.Cum 4 tabl. aen. 4 maj.Gottingæ, 1803.[94]Faujas Saint-Fond wrote articles on fossil bones (1794); on fossil plants both of France (1803) and of Monte Bolca (1820); on a fish from Nanterre (1802) and a fossil turtle (1803); on two species of fossil ox, whose skulls were found in Germany, France, and England (1803), and on an elephant’s tusk found in the volcanic tufa of Darbres (1803); on the fossil shells of Mayence (1806); and on a new genus (Clotho) of bivalve shells.[95]Sur les ossemens qui se trouvent dans le gyps de Montmartre(Bulletin des sciences pour la Société philomatique, tomes 1, 2, 1798, pp. 154–155).[96]The following account is translated from the fourth edition of theOssemens fossiles, vol. 1., 1834, also the sixth edition of theDiscours, separately published in 1830. It does not differ materially from the first edition of theEssay on the Theory of the Earth, translated by Jameson, and republished in New York, with additions by Samuel L. Mitchell, in 1818.[97]In the first edition of theThéoriehe says fifteen years, writing in 1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to thirty.[98]De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier’s law and of his assumptions; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says:“Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. G. Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in a kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, because he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science of organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did. Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously correlated in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in an animal well known and studied even to satiety; but for an unknown animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anatomists like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d’Azyr, Blumenbach, Soemmering, and Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier would have been himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at his word, and besides it is this assertion which will remain formulated in the mouths of the ignorant, and which has already made many persons believe that it is possible to answer the most difficult and often insoluble problems in palæontology, without having made any preliminary study, with the aid of dividers, and, on the other hand, discouraging the Blumenbachs and Soemmerings from giving their attention to this kind of work.”Huxley has,inter alia, put the case in a somewhat similar way, to show that the law should at least be applied with much caution to unknown forms:“Cuvier, in theDiscours sur les Révolutions de la Surface du Globe, strangely credits himself, and has ever since been credited by others, with the invention of a new method of palæontological research. But if you will turn to theRecherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, and watch Cuvier not speculating, but working, you will find that his method is neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he or any one else knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule, constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply because experience has shown that these two structures are coördinated” (Science and Hebrew Tradition. Rise and Progress of Paleontology1881, p. 23).[99]History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879).[100]The following statement of Cuvier’s views is taken from Jameson’s translation of the firstEssay on the Theory of the Earth, “which formed the introduction to hisRecherches sur les Ossemens fossiles,” the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the publication of theHydrogéologie. The original I have not seen, but I have compared Jameson’s translation with the sixth edition of theDiscours(1820).[101]Cuvier, in speaking of these revolutions, “which have changed the surface of our earth,” correctly reasons that they must have excited a more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine animals. “As these revolutions,” he says, “have consisted chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption over the land was general, they must have destroyed the entire class, or, if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed at least all the species inhabiting these continents, without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the other hand, millions of aquatic animals may have been left quite dry, or buried in newly formed strata or thrown violently on the coasts, while their races may have been still preserved in more peaceful parts of the sea, whence they might again propagate and spread after the agitation of the water had ceased.”[102]Discours, etc. Sixth edition.[103]Felix Bernard,The Principles of Paleontology, Paris, 1895, translated by C. E. Brooks, edited by J. M. Clark, from 14th Annual Report New York State Geologist, 1895, pp. 127–217 (p. 16). Bernard gives no reference to the work in which Schlotheim expressed this opinion. E. v. Schlotheim’s first work,Flora der Vorwelt, appeared in 1804, entitledBeschreibung merkwürdiger Kraüterabdrücke und Pflanzenversteinerungen. Ein Beytrag zur Flora der Vorvelt.I Abtheil. Mit 14 Kpfrn. 4o. Gotha, 1804. A later work wasBeyträge zur Naturgeschichte der Versteinerungen in geognostischer Hinsicht(Denkschrift d. k. Academie d. Wissenschaften zu München für den Jahren 1816 und 1817. 8 Taf. München, 1819). He was followed in Germany by Sternberg (Versuch einer geognostischbotanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorvelt.1–8. 1811. Leipzig, 1820–38); and in France by A. T. Brongniart, 1801–1876 (Histoire des Végétaux fossiles, 1828). These were the pioneers in palæophytology.[104]Bernard’sHistory and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879), p. 23.[105]In his valuable and comprehensiveGeschichte der Geologie und Paläontologie(1899), Prof. K. von Zittel, while referring to Lamarck’s works on the tertiary shells of Paris and hisAnimaux sans Vertèbres, also giving a just and full account of his life, practically gives him the credit of being one of the founders of invertebrate palæontology. He speaks of him as “the reformer and founder of scientific conchology,” and states that “he defined with wonderful acuteness the numerous genera and species of invertebrate animals, and created thereby for the ten years following an authoritative foundation.” Zittel, however, does not mention theHydrogéologie. Probably so rare a book was overlooked by the eminent German palæontologist.[106]History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879), p. 23.

[81]Although Defrance (born 1759, died in 1850) aided Lamarck in collecting tertiary shells, his earliest palæontological paper (on Hipponyx) did not appear until the year 1819.

[82]In a footnote Lamarck refers to an unpublished work, which probably formed a part of theHydrogéologie, published in the following year. “Voyez à ce sujet mon ouvrage intitulé: De l’influence du mouvement des eaus sur la surface du globe terrestre, et des indices du déplacement continuel du bassin des mers, ainsi que de son transport successif sur les différens points de la surface du globe” (no date).

[83]It should be stated that the first observer to inaugurate the comparative method was that remarkable forerunner of modern palæontologists, Steno the Dane, who was for a while a professor at Padua. In 1669, in his treatise entitledDe Solido intra Solidum naturaliter contento, which Lyell translates “On gems, crystals, and organic petrefactions inclosed within solid rocks,” he showed, by dissecting a shark from the Mediterranean, that certain fossil teeth found in Tuscany were also those of some shark. “He had also compared the shells discovered in the Italian strata with living species, pointed out their resemblance, and traced the various gradations from shells merely calcined, or which had only lost their animal gluten, to those petrefactions in which there was a perfect substitution of stony matter” (Lyell’sPrinciples, p. 25). About twenty years afterwards, the English philosopher Robert Hooke, in a discourse on earthquakes, written in 1688, but published posthumously in 1705, was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known; but he doubted whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he leans to the opinion that species had been lost. Some species, he observes with great sagacity, “arepeculiar to certain places, and not to be found elsewhere.” Turtles and such large ammonites as are found in Portland seem to have been the productions of hotter countries, and he thought that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone (Lyell’sPrinciples).Gesner the botanist, of Zurich, also published in 1758 an excellent treatise on petrefactions and the changes of the earth which they testify. He observed that some fossils, “such as ammonites, gryphites, belemnites, and other shells, are either of unknown species or found only in the Indian and other distant seas” (Lyell’sPrinciples).Geikie estimates very highly Guettard’s labors in palæontology, saying that “his descriptions and excellent drawings entitle him to rank as the first great leader of the palæontological school of France.” He published many long and elaborate memoirs containing brief descriptions, but without specific names, and figured some hundreds of fossil shells. He was the first to recognize trilobites (Illænus) in the Silurian slates of Angers, in a memoir published in 1762. Some of his generic names, says Geikie, “have passed into the languages of modernpalæontology,”and one of the genera of chalk sponges which he described has been named after him,Guettardia. In his memoir “On the accidents that have befallen fossil shells compared with those which are found to happen to shells now living in the sea” (Trans. Acad. Roy. Sciences, 1765, pp. 189, 329, 399) he shows that the beds of fossil shells on the land present the closest possible analogy to the flow of the present sea, so that it becomes impossible to doubt that the accidents, such as broken and worn shells, which have affected the fossil organisms, arose from precisely the same causes as those of exactly the same nature that still befall their successors on the existing ocean bottom. On the other hand, Geikie observes that it must be acknowledged “that Guettard does not seem to have had any clear ideas of the sequence of formations and of geological structures.”

Gesner the botanist, of Zurich, also published in 1758 an excellent treatise on petrefactions and the changes of the earth which they testify. He observed that some fossils, “such as ammonites, gryphites, belemnites, and other shells, are either of unknown species or found only in the Indian and other distant seas” (Lyell’sPrinciples).

Geikie estimates very highly Guettard’s labors in palæontology, saying that “his descriptions and excellent drawings entitle him to rank as the first great leader of the palæontological school of France.” He published many long and elaborate memoirs containing brief descriptions, but without specific names, and figured some hundreds of fossil shells. He was the first to recognize trilobites (Illænus) in the Silurian slates of Angers, in a memoir published in 1762. Some of his generic names, says Geikie, “have passed into the languages of modernpalæontology,”and one of the genera of chalk sponges which he described has been named after him,Guettardia. In his memoir “On the accidents that have befallen fossil shells compared with those which are found to happen to shells now living in the sea” (Trans. Acad. Roy. Sciences, 1765, pp. 189, 329, 399) he shows that the beds of fossil shells on the land present the closest possible analogy to the flow of the present sea, so that it becomes impossible to doubt that the accidents, such as broken and worn shells, which have affected the fossil organisms, arose from precisely the same causes as those of exactly the same nature that still befall their successors on the existing ocean bottom. On the other hand, Geikie observes that it must be acknowledged “that Guettard does not seem to have had any clear ideas of the sequence of formations and of geological structures.”

[84]Scheuchzer’s “Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes” (Piscium Querelae et Vindiciae, Germany, 1708), “a work of zoölogical merit, in which he gave some good plates and descriptions of fossil fish” (Lyell). Gesner’s treatise onpetrefactionspreceded Lamarck’s work in this direction, as did Brander’sFossillia Hantoniensia, published in 1766, which contained “excellent figures of fossil shells from the more modern (or Eocene) marine strata of Hampshire. In his opinion fossil animals and testacea were, for the most part, of unknown species, and of such as were known the living analogues now belonged to southern latitudes” (Lyell’sPrinciples, eighth edition, p. 46).

[85]Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, vi., 1805, pp. 222–228.

[86]Recueil de Planches des Coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris(Paris, 1823). There are added two plates of fossil fresh-water shells (twenty-one species of Limnæa, etc.) by Brard, with sixty-two figures.

[87]Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Biographies scientifiques, par Ducrotay de Blainville (Paris, 1890, p. 446).

[88]“Mémoire sur des os fossiles découverts auprès de la ville d’Aix en Provence” (Mém. Acad. Sc., Paris, 1760, pp. 209–220).

[89]“Sur un os d’une grosseur énorme qu’on a trouvé dans une couche de glaise au milieu de Paris; et en général sur les ossemens fossiles qui ont appartenu à de grands animaux” (Journal de Physique, tome xvii., 1781. pp. 393–405). Lamanon also, in 1780, published in the sameJournalan article on the nature and position of the bones found at Aix en Provence; and in 1783 another article on the fossil bones belonging to gigantic animals.

[90]Hollmann had still earlier published a paper entitledDe corporum marinorum, aliorumque peregrinorum in terra continente origine(Commentarii Soc. Goettingen., tom. iii., 1753, pp. 285–374).

[91]Novi Commentarii Soc. Sc. Goettingensis, tom. ii.,Commentat., tom. i.

[92]His first palæontological article appears to have been one entitledBeiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Vorwelt(Lichtenberg,Voigt’s Magaz., Bd. vi., S. 4, 1790, pp. 1–17). I have been unable to ascertain in which of his publications he describes and names the cave-bear.

[93]Specimen archæologia telluris terrarumque imprimis Hannoveranæ, pts. i., ii.Cum 4 tabl. aen. 4 maj.Gottingæ, 1803.

[94]Faujas Saint-Fond wrote articles on fossil bones (1794); on fossil plants both of France (1803) and of Monte Bolca (1820); on a fish from Nanterre (1802) and a fossil turtle (1803); on two species of fossil ox, whose skulls were found in Germany, France, and England (1803), and on an elephant’s tusk found in the volcanic tufa of Darbres (1803); on the fossil shells of Mayence (1806); and on a new genus (Clotho) of bivalve shells.

[95]Sur les ossemens qui se trouvent dans le gyps de Montmartre(Bulletin des sciences pour la Société philomatique, tomes 1, 2, 1798, pp. 154–155).

[96]The following account is translated from the fourth edition of theOssemens fossiles, vol. 1., 1834, also the sixth edition of theDiscours, separately published in 1830. It does not differ materially from the first edition of theEssay on the Theory of the Earth, translated by Jameson, and republished in New York, with additions by Samuel L. Mitchell, in 1818.

[97]In the first edition of theThéoriehe says fifteen years, writing in 1812. In the later edition he changed the number of years to thirty.

[98]De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier’s law and of his assumptions; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says:“Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. G. Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in a kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, because he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science of organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did. Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously correlated in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in an animal well known and studied even to satiety; but for an unknown animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anatomists like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d’Azyr, Blumenbach, Soemmering, and Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier would have been himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at his word, and besides it is this assertion which will remain formulated in the mouths of the ignorant, and which has already made many persons believe that it is possible to answer the most difficult and often insoluble problems in palæontology, without having made any preliminary study, with the aid of dividers, and, on the other hand, discouraging the Blumenbachs and Soemmerings from giving their attention to this kind of work.”Huxley has,inter alia, put the case in a somewhat similar way, to show that the law should at least be applied with much caution to unknown forms:“Cuvier, in theDiscours sur les Révolutions de la Surface du Globe, strangely credits himself, and has ever since been credited by others, with the invention of a new method of palæontological research. But if you will turn to theRecherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, and watch Cuvier not speculating, but working, you will find that his method is neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he or any one else knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule, constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply because experience has shown that these two structures are coördinated” (Science and Hebrew Tradition. Rise and Progress of Paleontology1881, p. 23).

[98]De Blainville is inclined to make light of Cuvier’s law and of his assumptions; and in his somewhat cynical, depreciatory way, says:

“Thus for the thirty years during which appeared the works of M. G. Cuvier on fossil bones, under the most favorable circumstances, in a kind of renascence of the science of organization of animals, then almost effaced in France, aided by the richest osteological collections which then existed in Europe, M. G. Cuvier passed an active and a comparatively long life, in a region abounding in fossil bones, without having established any other principle in osteology than a witticism which he had been unable for a moment to take seriously himself, because he had not yet investigated or sufficiently studied the science of organization, which I even doubt, to speak frankly, if he ever did. Otherwise, he would himself soon have perceived the falsity of his assertion that a single facet of a bone was sufficient to reconstruct a skeleton from the observation that everything is harmoniously correlated in an animal. It is a great thing if the memory, aided by a strong imagination, can thus pass from a bone to the entire skeleton, even in an animal well known and studied even to satiety; but for an unknown animal, there is no one except a man but slightly acquainted with the anatomy of animals who could pretend to do it. It is not true anatomists like Hunter, Camper, Pallas, Vicq-d’Azyr, Blumenbach, Soemmering, and Meckel who would be so presuming, and M. G. Cuvier would have been himself much embarrassed if he had been taken at his word, and besides it is this assertion which will remain formulated in the mouths of the ignorant, and which has already made many persons believe that it is possible to answer the most difficult and often insoluble problems in palæontology, without having made any preliminary study, with the aid of dividers, and, on the other hand, discouraging the Blumenbachs and Soemmerings from giving their attention to this kind of work.”

Huxley has,inter alia, put the case in a somewhat similar way, to show that the law should at least be applied with much caution to unknown forms:

“Cuvier, in theDiscours sur les Révolutions de la Surface du Globe, strangely credits himself, and has ever since been credited by others, with the invention of a new method of palæontological research. But if you will turn to theRecherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, and watch Cuvier not speculating, but working, you will find that his method is neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he or any one else knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule, constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply because experience has shown that these two structures are coördinated” (Science and Hebrew Tradition. Rise and Progress of Paleontology1881, p. 23).

[99]History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879).

[100]The following statement of Cuvier’s views is taken from Jameson’s translation of the firstEssay on the Theory of the Earth, “which formed the introduction to hisRecherches sur les Ossemens fossiles,” the first edition of which appeared in 1812, or ten years after the publication of theHydrogéologie. The original I have not seen, but I have compared Jameson’s translation with the sixth edition of theDiscours(1820).

[101]Cuvier, in speaking of these revolutions, “which have changed the surface of our earth,” correctly reasons that they must have excited a more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine animals. “As these revolutions,” he says, “have consisted chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption over the land was general, they must have destroyed the entire class, or, if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed at least all the species inhabiting these continents, without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the other hand, millions of aquatic animals may have been left quite dry, or buried in newly formed strata or thrown violently on the coasts, while their races may have been still preserved in more peaceful parts of the sea, whence they might again propagate and spread after the agitation of the water had ceased.”

[102]Discours, etc. Sixth edition.

[103]Felix Bernard,The Principles of Paleontology, Paris, 1895, translated by C. E. Brooks, edited by J. M. Clark, from 14th Annual Report New York State Geologist, 1895, pp. 127–217 (p. 16). Bernard gives no reference to the work in which Schlotheim expressed this opinion. E. v. Schlotheim’s first work,Flora der Vorwelt, appeared in 1804, entitledBeschreibung merkwürdiger Kraüterabdrücke und Pflanzenversteinerungen. Ein Beytrag zur Flora der Vorvelt.I Abtheil. Mit 14 Kpfrn. 4o. Gotha, 1804. A later work wasBeyträge zur Naturgeschichte der Versteinerungen in geognostischer Hinsicht(Denkschrift d. k. Academie d. Wissenschaften zu München für den Jahren 1816 und 1817. 8 Taf. München, 1819). He was followed in Germany by Sternberg (Versuch einer geognostischbotanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorvelt.1–8. 1811. Leipzig, 1820–38); and in France by A. T. Brongniart, 1801–1876 (Histoire des Végétaux fossiles, 1828). These were the pioneers in palæophytology.

[104]Bernard’sHistory and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879), p. 23.

[105]In his valuable and comprehensiveGeschichte der Geologie und Paläontologie(1899), Prof. K. von Zittel, while referring to Lamarck’s works on the tertiary shells of Paris and hisAnimaux sans Vertèbres, also giving a just and full account of his life, practically gives him the credit of being one of the founders of invertebrate palæontology. He speaks of him as “the reformer and founder of scientific conchology,” and states that “he defined with wonderful acuteness the numerous genera and species of invertebrate animals, and created thereby for the ten years following an authoritative foundation.” Zittel, however, does not mention theHydrogéologie. Probably so rare a book was overlooked by the eminent German palæontologist.

[106]History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery(1879), p. 23.

Lamarckdied before the rise of the sciences of morphology, embryology, and cytology. As to palæontology, which he aided in founding, he had but the slightest idea of the geological succession of life-forms, and not an inkling of the biogenetic law or recapitulation theory. Little did he know or foresee that the main and strongest support of his own theory was to be this same science of the extinct forms of life. Yet it is a matter of interest to know what were his views or opinions on the nature of life; whether he made any suggestions bearing on the doctrine of the unity of nature; whether he was a vitalist or not; and whether he was a follower of Haller and of Bonnet,[107]as was Cuvier, or pronounced in favor of epigenesis.

We know that he was a firm believer in spontaneous generation, and that he conceived that it took place not only in the origination of his primeval germs orébauches, but at all later periods down to the present day.

Yet Lamarck accepted Harvey’s doctrine, published in 1651, that all living beings arose from germs or eggs.[108]

He must have known of Spallanzani’s experiments, published in 1776, even if he had not read the writings of Treviranus (1802–1805), both of whom had experimentally disproved the theory of the spontaneous generation of animalcules in putrid infusions, showing that the lowest organisms develop only from germs.

The eighteenth century, though one of great intellectual activity, was, however, as regards cosmology, geology, general physiology or biology, a period of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth or even a part of it was beyond the reach of the greatest geniuses, and they could only seize on half-truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist, systematic zoölogist, and synthetic philosopher, had done his best work before the rise of the experimental and inductive methods, when direct observation and experiments had begun to take the place of vagueà priorithinking and reasoning, so that he labored under a disadvantage due largely to the age in which he lived.

Only the closing years of the century witnessed the rise of the experimental methods in physics and chemistry, owing to the brilliant work of Priestley and of Lavoisier. The foundations of general physiology had been laid by Haller,[109]those of embryology to a partial extent by Wolff,[110]Von Baer’s work not appearing until 1829, the year in which Lamarck died.

Spontaneous Generation.—Lamarck’s views on spontaneous generation are stated in hisRecherches sur l’Organisation des Corps vivans(1802). He begins by referring to his statement in a previous work[111]that life may be suspended for a time and then go on again.

“Here I would remark it (life) can be produced (préparée) both by an organic act and by nature herself, without any act of this kind, in such a way that certain bodies without possessing life can be prepared to receive it, by an impressionwhich indicates in these bodies the first traces of organization.”

We will not enter upon an exposition of his views on the nature of sexual generation and of fecundation, the character of hisvapeur subtile(aura vitalis) which he supposes to take an active part in the act of fertilization, because the notion is quite as objectionable as that of the vital force which he rejects. He goes on to say, however, that we cannot penetrate farther into the wonderful mystery of fecundation, but the opinions he expresses lead to the view that “natureherself imitates her procedures in fecundation in another state of things, without having need of the union or of the products of any preëxistent organization.”

He proceeds to observe that in the places where hisaura vitalis, or subtle fluid, is very abundant, as in hot climates or in heated periods, and especially in humid places, life seems to originate and to multiply itself everywhere and with a singular rapidity.

“In this high temperature the higher animals and mankind develop and mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly; while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light complete the conditions necessary to their existence.“Because heat is so advantageous to the simplest animals, let us examine whether there is not occasion for believing that it can itself form, with the concourse of favorable circumstances, the first germs of animal life.“Nature necessarily forms generations, spontaneous or direct, at the extremity of each organic kingdom or where the simplest organic bodies occur.”

“Because heat is so advantageous to the simplest animals, let us examine whether there is not occasion for believing that it can itself form, with the concourse of favorable circumstances, the first germs of animal life.

“Nature necessarily forms generations, spontaneous or direct, at the extremity of each organic kingdom or where the simplest organic bodies occur.”

This proposition, he allows, is so far removed from the view generally held, that it will be for a long time, and perhaps always, regarded as one of the errors of the human mind.

“I do not,” he adds, “ask any one to accord it the least confidence on my word alone. But as surely it will happen, sooner or later, that men on the onehand independent of prejudices even the most widespread, and on the other profound observers of nature, may have a glimpse of this truth, I am very content that we should know that it is of the number of those views which, in spite of the prejudices of my age, I have thought it well to accept.”

“Why,” he asks, “should not heat and electricity act on certain matters under favorable conditions and circumstances?” He quotes Lavoisier as saying (Chémie, i., p. 202) “that God in creating light had spread over the world the principle of organization of feeling and of thought”; and Lamarck suggests that heat, “this mother of generation, this material soul of organized bodies,” may be the chief one of the means which nature directly employs to produce in the appropriate kind of matter an act of arrangement of parts, of a primitive germ of organization, and consequently of vitalization analogous to sexual fecundation.

“Not only the direct formation of the simplest living beings could have taken place, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, but the following considerations prove that it is necessary that such germ-formations should be effected and be repeated under favorable conditions, without which the state of things which we observe could neither exist nor subsist.”

His argument is that in the lower polyps (the Protozoa) there is no sexual reproduction, no eggs. But they perish (as he strangely thought, without apparently attempting to verify his belief) in the winter. How, he asks, can they reappear? Is it notmore likely that these simple organisms are themselves regenerated? After much verbiage and repetition, he concludes:

“We may conceive that the simplest organisms can arise from a minute mass of substances which possess the following conditions—namely, which will have solid parts in a state nearest the fluid conditions, consequently having the greatest suppleness and only sufficient consistence to be susceptible of constituting the parts contained in it. Such is the condition of the most gelatinous organized bodies.“Through such a mass of substances the subtile and expansive fluids spread, and, always in motion in the milieu environing it, unceasingly penetrate it and likewise dissipate it, arranging while traversing this mass the internal disposition of its parts, and rendering it suitable to continually absorb and to exhale the other environing fluids which are able to penetrate into its interior, and which are susceptible of being contained.“These other fluids, which are water charged with dissolved (dissous) gas, or with other tenuous substances, the atmospheric air, which contains water, etc., I call containable fluids, to distinguish them from subtile fluids, such as caloric, electricity, etc., which no known bodies are believed to contain.“The containable fluids absorbed by the small gelatinous mass in question remain almost motionless in its different parts, because the non-containable subtile fluids which always penetrate there do not permit it.“In this way the uncontainable fluids at first mark out the first traces of the simplest organization, and consequently the containable fluids by their movements and their other influences develop it, and with time and all the favorable circumstances complete it.”

“Through such a mass of substances the subtile and expansive fluids spread, and, always in motion in the milieu environing it, unceasingly penetrate it and likewise dissipate it, arranging while traversing this mass the internal disposition of its parts, and rendering it suitable to continually absorb and to exhale the other environing fluids which are able to penetrate into its interior, and which are susceptible of being contained.

“These other fluids, which are water charged with dissolved (dissous) gas, or with other tenuous substances, the atmospheric air, which contains water, etc., I call containable fluids, to distinguish them from subtile fluids, such as caloric, electricity, etc., which no known bodies are believed to contain.

“The containable fluids absorbed by the small gelatinous mass in question remain almost motionless in its different parts, because the non-containable subtile fluids which always penetrate there do not permit it.

“In this way the uncontainable fluids at first mark out the first traces of the simplest organization, and consequently the containable fluids by their movements and their other influences develop it, and with time and all the favorable circumstances complete it.”

This is certainly a sufficiently vague and unsatisfactory theory of spontaneous generation. This sort of guess-work and hypothetical reasoning is not entirely confined to Lamarck’s time. Have we not, even a century later, examples among some of our biologists, and very eminent ones, of whole volumes ofà prioritheorizing and reasoning, with scarcely a single new fact to serve as a foundation? And yet this is an age of laboratories, of experimentations and of trained observers. The best of us indulge in far-fetched hypotheses, such as pangenesis, panmixia, the existence of determinants, and if this be so should we not excuse Lamarck, who gave so many years to close observation in systematic botany and zoölogy, for his flights into the empyrean of subtle fluids, containable and uncontainable, and for his invocation of anaura vitalis, at a time when the world of demonstrated facts in modern biology was undiscovered and its existence unsuspected?

The Preëxistence of Germs and the Encasement Theory.—Lamarck did not believe in Bonnet’s idea of the “preëxistence of germs.” He asks whether there is any foundation for the notion that germs “successively develop in generations,i.e.in the multiplication of individuals for the preservation of species,” and says:

“I am not inclined to believe it if this preëxistence is taken in a general sense; but in limiting it to individuals in which the unfertilized embryos or germs are formed before generation. I then believe that it has some foundation.—They say with good reason,” he adds, “that every living being originates froman egg.... But the eggs being the envelope of every kind of germ, they preëxist in the individuals which produce them, before fertilization has vivified them. The seeds of plants (which are vegetable eggs) actually exist in the ovaries of flowers before the fertilization of these ovaries.”[112]

From whom did he get this idea that seeds or eggs are envelopes of all sorts of germs? It is not the “evolution” of a single germ, as, for example, an excessively minute but complete chick in the hen’s egg, in the sense held by Bonnet. Who it was he does not mention. He evidently, however, had the Swiss biologist in mind, who held that all living things proceed from preëxisting germs.[113]

Whatever may have been his views as to the germs in the egg before fertilization, we take it that he believed in the epigenetic development of the plant or animal after the seed or egg was once fertilized.[114]

Lamarck did not adopt the encasement theory of Swammerdam and of Heller. We find nothing in Lamarck’s writings opposed to epigenesis. The following passage, which bears on this subject, is translated from hisMémoires de Physique(p. 250), wherehe contrasts the growth of organic bodies with that of minerals.

“The body of this living being not having been formed byjuxtaposition, as most mineral substances, that is to say, by the external and successive apposition of particles aggregateden masseby attraction, but essentially formed by generation, in its principle, it has then grown by intussusception—namely, by the introduction, the transportation, and the internal apposition of molecules borne along and deposited between its parts; whence have resulted the successive developments of parts which compose the body of this living individual, and from which afterwards also result the repairs which preserve it during a limited time.”

Here, as elsewhere in his various works, Lamarck brings out the fact, for the first time stated, that all material things are either non-living or mineral, inorganic; or living, organic. A favorite phrase with him is living bodies, or, as we should say, organisms. He also is the first one to show that minerals increase by juxtaposition, while organisms grow by intussusception.

No one would look in his writings for an idea or suggestion of the principle of differentiation of parts or organs as we now understand it, or for the idea of the physiological division of labor; these were reserved for the later periods of embryology and morphology.

Origin of the First Vital Function.—We will now return to the germ. After it had begun spontaneous existence, Lamarck proceeds to say:

“Before the containable fluids absorbed by the small, jelly-like mass in question have been expelled by the new portions of the same fluids which reach there, they can then deposit certain of the contained fluids they carry along, and the movements of the contained fluids may apply these substances to the containing parts of the newly organized microscopic being. In this way originates the first of the vital functions which becomes established in the simplest organism,i.e., nutrition. The environing containable fluids are, then, for the living body of very great simplicity, a veritable chyle entirely prepared by nature.“Mutilation cannot operate without gradually increasing the consistence of the parts contained within the minute new organism and without extending its dimensions. Hence soon arose the second of the vital functions,growth or internal development.”

“Mutilation cannot operate without gradually increasing the consistence of the parts contained within the minute new organism and without extending its dimensions. Hence soon arose the second of the vital functions,growth or internal development.”

First Faculty of Animal Nature.—Then gradually as the continuity of this state of things within the same minute living mass in question increases the consistence of its parts enclosed within and extends its dimensions, a vital orgasm, at first very feeble, but becoming progressively more intense, is formed in these enclosed parts and renders them susceptible ofreactionagainst the slight impression of the fluids in motion which they contain, and at the same time renders them capable of contraction and of distention. Hence the origin ofanimal irritabilityand the basis of feeling, which is developed wherever a nervous fluid, susceptible of locating the effects in one of several special centres, can be formed.

“Scarcely will the living corpuscle, newly animalized, have received any increase in consistence and indimensions of the parts contained, when, as the result of the organic movement which it enjoys, it will be subjected to successive changes and losses of its substance.“It will then be obliged to take nourishment not only to obtain any development whatever, but also to preserve its individual existence, because it is necessary that it repair its losses under penalty of its destruction.“But as the individual in question has not yet any special organ for nutrition, it therefore absorbs by the pores of its internal surface the substance adapted for its nourishment. Thus the first mode of taking food in a living body so simple can be no other than by absorption or a sort of suction, which is accomplished by the pores of its outer surface.“This is not all; up to the present time the animalized corpuscle we are considering is still only a primitive animalcule because it as yet has no special organ. Let us see then how nature will come to furnish it with any primitive special organ, and what will be the organ that nature will form before any others, and which in the simplest animal is the only one constantly found; this is the alimentary canal, the principal organ of digestion common to all except colpodes, vibrios, proteus (amœba), volvoces, monads, etc.“This digestive canal is,” he says—proceeding with hisà priorimorphology—“a little different from that of this day, produced by contractions of the body, which are stronger in one part of the body than in another, until a little crease is produced on the surface of the body. This furrow or crease will receive the food. Insensibly this little furrow by the habit of being filled, and by the so frequent use of its pores, will gradually increase in depth; it will soon assume the form of a pouch or of a tubular cavity with porous walls, a blind sac, or with but a single opening. Behold the primitive alimentarycanal created by nature, the simplest organ of digestion.”

“It will then be obliged to take nourishment not only to obtain any development whatever, but also to preserve its individual existence, because it is necessary that it repair its losses under penalty of its destruction.

“But as the individual in question has not yet any special organ for nutrition, it therefore absorbs by the pores of its internal surface the substance adapted for its nourishment. Thus the first mode of taking food in a living body so simple can be no other than by absorption or a sort of suction, which is accomplished by the pores of its outer surface.

“This is not all; up to the present time the animalized corpuscle we are considering is still only a primitive animalcule because it as yet has no special organ. Let us see then how nature will come to furnish it with any primitive special organ, and what will be the organ that nature will form before any others, and which in the simplest animal is the only one constantly found; this is the alimentary canal, the principal organ of digestion common to all except colpodes, vibrios, proteus (amœba), volvoces, monads, etc.

“This digestive canal is,” he says—proceeding with hisà priorimorphology—“a little different from that of this day, produced by contractions of the body, which are stronger in one part of the body than in another, until a little crease is produced on the surface of the body. This furrow or crease will receive the food. Insensibly this little furrow by the habit of being filled, and by the so frequent use of its pores, will gradually increase in depth; it will soon assume the form of a pouch or of a tubular cavity with porous walls, a blind sac, or with but a single opening. Behold the primitive alimentarycanal created by nature, the simplest organ of digestion.”

In likeà priorimanner he describes the creation of the faculty of reproduction. The next organ, he says, is that of reproduction due to the regenerative faculty. He describes fission and budding. Finally (p. 122) he says:

“Indeed, we perceive that if the first germs of living bodies are all formed in one day in such great abundance and facility under favorable circumstances, they ought to be, nevertheless, by reason of the antiquity of the causes which make them exist, the most ancient organisms in nature.”

In 1794 he rejected the view once held of a continuous chain of being, theéchelle des êtressuggested by Locke and by Leibnitz, and more fully elaborated by Bonnet, from the inorganic to the organic worlds, from minerals to plants, from plants to polyps (our Infusoria), polyps to worms, and so on to the higher animals. He, on the contrary, affirms that nature makes leaps, that there is a wide gap between minerals and living bodies, that everything is not gradated and shaded into each other. One reason for this was possibly his strange view, expressed in 1794, that all brute bodies and inorganic matters, even granite, were not formed at the same epoch but at different times, and were derived from organisms.[115]

The mystical doctrine of a vital force was rife inLamarck’s time. The chief starting point of the doctrine was due to Haller, and, as Verworn states, it is a doctrine which has confused all physiology down to the middle of the present century, and even now emerges again here and there in varied form.[116]

Lamarck was not a vitalist. Life, he says,[117]is usually supposed to be a particular being or entity; a sort of principle whose nature is unknown, and which possesses living bodies. This notion he denies as absurd, saying that life is a very natural phenomenon, a physical fact; in truth a little complicated in its principles, but not in any sense a particular or special being or entity.

He then defines life in the following words: “Life is an order and a state of things in the parts of every body possessing it, which permits or renders possible in it the execution of organic movement, and which, so long as it exists, is effectively opposed to death. Derange this order and this state of things to the point of preventing the execution of organic movement, or the possibility of its reëstablishment, then you cause death.” Afterwards, in thePhilosophie zoologique, he modifies this definition, which reads thus: “Life, in the parts of a body which possesses it, is an order and a state of things which permit organic movements;and these movements, which constitute active life, result from the action of a stimulating cause which excites them.”[118]

For the science of all living bodies Lamarck proposed the word “Biology,” which is so convenient a term at the present day. The word first appears in the preface to theHydrogéologie, published in 1802. It is worthy of note that in the same year the same word was proposed for the same science by G. R. Treviranus as the title of a work,Biologie, der Philosophie der lebenden Natur, published in 1802–1805 (vols. i.–vi., 1802–1822), the first volume appearing in 1802.

In the second part of thePhilosophie zoologiquehe considers the physical causes of life, and in the introduction he defines nature as theensembleof objects which comprise: (1) All existing physical bodies; (2) the general and special laws which regulate the changes of condition and situation of these bodies; (3) finally, the movement everywhere going on among them resulting in the wonderful order of things in nature.

To regard nature as eternal, and consequently as having existed from all time, is baseless andunreasonable. He prefers to think that nature is only a result, “whence, I suppose, and am glad to admit, a first cause, in a word, a supreme power which has given existence to nature, which has made it as a whole what it is.”

As to the source of life in bodies endowed with it, he considers it a problem more difficult than to determine the course of the stars in space, or the size, masses, and movements of the planets belonging to our solar system; but, however formidable the problem, the difficulties are not insurmountable, as the phenomena are purely physical—i.e., essentially resulting from acts of organization.

After defining life, in the third chapter (beginning vol. ii.) he treats of the exciting cause of organic movements. This exciting cause is foreign to the body which it vivifies, and does not perish, like the latter. “This cause resides in invisible, subtile, expansive, ever-active fluids which penetrate or are incessantly developed in the bodies which they animate.” These subtile fluids we should in these days regard as the physico-chemical agents, such as heat, light, electricity.

What he says in the next two chapters as to the “orgasme” and irritability excited by the before-mentioned exciting cause may be regarded as a crude foreshadowing of the primary properties of protoplasm, now regarded as the physical basis of life—i.e., contractility, irritability, and metabolism. In Chapter VI. Lamarck discusses direct or spontaneous generation in the same way as in 1802. In the following paragraph we have foreshadowed the characteristicqualities of the primeval protoplasmic matter fitted to receive the first traces of organization and life:

“Every mass of substance homogeneous in appearance, of a gelatinous or mucilaginous consistence, whose parts, coherent among themselves, will be in the state nearest fluidity, but will have only a consistence sufficient to constitute containing parts, will be the body most fitted to receive the first traces of organization and life.”

In the third part of thePhilosophie zoologiqueLamarck considers the physical causes of feeling—i.e., those which form the productive force of actions, and those giving rise to intelligent acts. After describing the nervous system and its functions, he discusses the nervous fluid. His physiological views are based on those of Richerand’sPhysiologie, which he at times quotes.

Lamarck’s thoughts on the nature of the nervous fluid (Recherches sur le fluide nerveux) are curious and illustrative of the gropings after the truth of his age.

He claims that the supposed nervous fluid has much analogy to the electric, that it is thefeu éthéré“animalized by the circumstances under which it occurs.” In hisRecherches sur l’organisation des corps vivans(1802) he states that, as the result of changes continually undergone by the principal fluids of an animal, there is continually set free in a state offeu fixéa special fluid, which at the instant of its disengagement occurs in the expansive state of the caloric, then becomes gradually rarefied, and insensibly arrives at the state of an extremely subtile fluidwhich then passes along the smallest nervous ramifications in the substance of the nerve, which is a very good conductor for it. On its side the brain sends back the subtile fluid in question along the nerves to the different organs.

In the same work (1802) Lamarck defines thought as a physical act taking place in the brain. “This act of thinking gives rise to different displacements of the subtile nervous fluid and to different accumulations of this fluid in the parts of the brain where the ideas have been traced.” There result from the flow of the fluid on the conserved impressions of ideas, special movements which portions of this fluid acquire with each impression, which give rise to compounds by their union producing new impressions on the delicate organ which receives them, and which constitute abstract ideas of all kinds, also the different acts of thought.

All the acts which constitute thought are the comparisons of ideas, both simple and complex, and the results of these comparisons are judgments.

He then discusses the influence of the nervous fluid on the muscles, and also its influence considered as the cause of feeling (sentiment). Finally he concludes thatfeu fixé, caloric, the nervous fluid, and the electric fluid “are only one and the same substance occurring in different states.”

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