228 Prof. K. F. H. Marx's Memoir oj (he Life and 



Among the individuals who, by the investigation and expo- 

 sition of the traces of ancient remains, have efficiently contri- 

 buted to the history of the formation of our globe and its 

 earliest inhabitants, Blumenbaclfs name must be included. 

 He was the first who formed a collection of fossils to illustrate 

 and to systematize the remains of the pre- Adamitic period.* 



In the year 1790 he wrote his " Beiirage zur Naturge- 

 schichte der VorweW' 1 (Contributions to the Natural History of 

 the Ancient World). t He devoted two discourses, delivered 

 to the Society, to the consideration of the organic remains 

 which had become known to him from the districts around the 

 city.J He also pointed out the connection of palaeontology 

 and geology, illustrating the more exact determination of 

 the relative age of different deposits in the crust of the earth 

 by means of organic remains, § and it was he who gave the 

 first impulse to this subject. After a journey to Switzerland, 

 he directed attention to those fossils of which the living ana- 

 logues still exist in the same district, to such as have their ori- 



* The fossil genus Oxyporus, which occurs in amber, and which Graven- 

 horst mentions in his Monographia Culeopterorum Micropterorum, Gotting. 

 1806, p. 235, is in the collection of Blumenbach. In regard to Blumen- 

 bach, the author says, " Utinam Blumcnbachius multorum qua possidet electro 

 iiiclusorum inscctorum dcscriptioncm ct comparationem cum insectis hodicmis affini- 

 bus ederct. Ingenium viri ccleberrimi et de historia naturali jam diit egregie me- 

 riti, perpensam sane hypothesin de ortu et formatione eleclri nobis inde impertire 

 posset." 



t In the Magazin fur das Neucste, &c. 



J Specimen Archseologise Telluris terrarumque inprimis Hannoveranarum, 

 1801. In the Commentat. vol. xv. p. 132-150. Spec, alterum, 1813. In 

 vol. iii. recent, p. 3-24. 



§ " On the Succession of the Different Catastrophes of the Globe," in the 

 second edition of his Contributions to Natural History, 1806. Part i. 

 p. 113-123. One of the most competent judges in this department, Link, in his 

 work " Die Urwelt und das Altcrtkum erldutcrt durch die Naturlamde" which 

 he dedicated to his master, says in the preface, that we have to thank Blu- 

 menbach and Cuvier for the elucidation of the entire difference between the 

 ancient and the present world. Von Hoff, likewise, who is so well qualified 

 to give an opinion, says in his Erinnerung an JBlamenbach's Verdicnste um die 

 Gcologie, Gotha, 1826, p. 3, " Among naturalists, Blumenbach was the first 

 who assigned to palaeontology its true place among the foundations of geo- 

 logy ; he regarded it as the most useful auxiliary of that science ; and he 

 declared, as his belief, that important conclusions in cosmogony were to be 

 anticipated from the study of organic remains, and more particularly of their 

 various relative positions." 



