90 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
(an X.), or ten years before the first publication of 
Cuvier’s famous Descours sur les Revolutions de la 
Surface du Globe (1812). Written in his popular and 
attractive style, and thoroughly in accord with the 
cosmological and theological prepossessions of the 
age, the Discours was widely read, and passed through 
many editions. On the other hand, the Aydro- 
géologie died stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a 
reader, never reaching a second edition, and is now, 
like most of his works, a bibliographical rarity. 
The only writer who has said a word in its favor, 
or contrasted it with the work of Cuvier, is the ju- 
dicious and candid Huxley, who, though by no means 
favorable to Lamarck’s factors of evolution, frankly 
said : 
“The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in 
support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses 
of special creation and of catastrophism ; and the wild 
speculations of the Dzscours sur les Revolutions de la 
Surface du Globe were held to be models of sound 
scientific thinking, while the really much more sober 
and philosophic hypotheses of the Hydrogéologie were 
scouted.” * 
Before summarizing the contents of this book, let 
us glance at the geological atmosphere—thin and 
tenuous as it was then—in which Lamarck lived. 
The credit of being the first observer, before Steno 
(1669), to state that fossils are the remains of animals 
which were once alive, is due to an Italian, Frasca- 
tero, of Verona, who wrote in 1517. 
* Evolution in Biology, in Darwiniana, New York, 1896, p. 212. 
