Palaeontology. 169 



bryological phases of recent fishes and the geological 

 succession of the class." Whereupon he deduced the 

 generalization, "The history of the individual is but the 

 epitomized history of the race ". Another notable result 

 was the recognition and characterization of his so-called 

 prophetic or synthetic types, that is, such as embrace 

 features in their organization which afterwards become 

 distributed among a number of groups, and are never 

 recombined. 



Even after Lyell won conviction for his " Uniformi- 

 tarian doctrine ", for which Hutton had also contended, 

 that the earth has not been subjected to Palaeonto i_ 

 cataclysmic revolutions, but has been shaped ogy after 

 and fashioned throughout the countless ages Darwm * 

 by processes not differing in kind from those which are 

 at work to-day, the palaeontologists still remained true 

 to Cuvier, and antagonistic to Lamarck. There were 

 indeed occasional suggestions of fresh light, but practi- 

 cally the dawn dates from Darwin (1859); and palaeon- 

 tology, like the rest of biology, felt the new influence. 



"This revolution", Prof. Marsh says, "has influ- 

 enced palaeontology as extensively as any other depart- 

 ment of science, and hence the new period. ... In the 

 last epoch, species were represented independently, by 

 parallel lines; in the present period, they are indicated 

 by dependent, branching lines. The former was the 

 analytic, the latter is the synthetic, period. To-day, 

 the animals and plants now living are believed to be 

 genetically connected with those of the distant past; 

 and the palaeontologist no longer deems species of the 

 first importance, but seeks for relationships and genea- 

 logies connecting the past with the present." 



If any one man deserves to be put at the head of a 

 department in science in modern times, Karl Alfred von 

 Zittel (b. 1839) may be called the first palaeontologist 

 of the day. And this not only for his endless detailed 

 researches, but because as a teacher he has influenced 

 so many, by his living voice, by his text-books, and by 

 his unrivalled arrangement of the palaeontological col- 

 lection at Munich. His great Handbuch der Palczonto- 

 logie, of which he was editor and part author, occupied 



