SKETCH OF PAUL GERVAIS. 553 



paleontologists, the author showed that real cetaceans were not yet 

 known in the deposits anterior to the Miocene. To M. Gervais are 

 owing, in the study of fossil reptiles, some valuable observations on 

 the footprints of the large batrachians called cheirotherium in the Tri- 

 assic sandstones of Lodeve. 



Most of M. Gervais's publications were both zoological and pale- 

 ontological. Some were of a more general character. Among these 

 was the " Medical Zoology " (" Zoulogie Medicale "), which was pub- 

 lished conjointly by him and M. Van Beneden in 1850, and is remark- 

 able for the prominence given to the lower animals and to the theory 

 of parasitism which is developed in it ; and a natural history of the 

 mammalia (" Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes "), 1855, in which 

 attention is given to the habits of animals, and to their relations to the 

 arts, commerce, and agriculture. This work, which is in two volumes, 

 abounds in original observations, the fruit of the personal researches 

 of the author, which have in many instances modified the views pre- 

 viously held by mammalogists. He was also the author of " A Theory 

 of the Human Skeleton " (" Theorie du squelette Humain "), 1856 ; of 

 the "Metamorphosis of Organisms and Alternating Generations" 

 (" De la Metamorphose des Organisms et des Generations Alter- 

 nantes"), 18G1; on the "Antiquity of Man" ("De PAnciennete de 

 l'Homme "), 1863 ; of " Elements of the Natural Sciences " (" Elements 

 des Sciences naturelle "), 1856 ; and of many notes, memoirs, and arti- 

 cles in the " Dictionary of the Natural Sciences," " Patria," " A Million 

 Facts," " The Jardin des Plantes," and " La Nature." The wide range 

 of subjects covered in these books testifies to the extent of his knowl- 

 edge and the diversity of his talents. " In a science prodigiously vast," 

 says M. Blanchard, " he showed himself familiar with most of the 

 subjects, and was accounted among the most erudite." M. Gervais 

 was elected to the Academy of Sciences in January, 1864, and with 

 this he gained one of the great objects of his ambition. After work- 

 ing for nearly forty-five years, to the great profit and advantage of 

 science, he died, from an illness of several months' duration, as poor as 

 he had been in the earlier days of his career. 



Mr. J. G. Ellis has criticised, in the " Educational "Weekly," Dr. "Wilson's 

 theory that a new American race is to be produced by the absorption of the In- 

 dian race with the white. Admitting, he reasons, that the white American race is 

 acquiring peculiar characteristics, and that these are not unlike those of the Indian, 

 may it not be the work of the American environment, rather than that of inter- 

 crossing with Indians, of which there is no sufficient evidence, but which is con- 

 tradicted by indisputable genealogies in some cases where the approach to like- 

 ness is apparent? Sir Charles Dilke asserted, in his "Greater Britain," that the 

 white American race was growing like the red Indian. The assertion seemed 

 broad and strong, but something of the kind seems to be indicated in this dis- 

 cussion. 



