Prof. Le Conte as Seen Through His Biological Work. 219 



The first, chronologically, published in 1850 while he was still 

 a practicing physician, is "On the Science of Medicine, and 

 Causes Which Have Retarded Its Progress," The second, 

 bearing the date of 1858 and entitled "Morphology and Its 

 Connection With Fine Art," gives more fully and clearly than 

 can be gained elsewhere the doctrine of organic creation 

 then held by him. The third, read at the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in 1859 and published 

 the same year, is on "The Correlation of Physical, Chemical 

 and Vital Force, and the Conservation of Force in Vital Phe- 

 nomena," This is undoubtedly one of his most important 

 contributions to biological thought. His very last published 

 words are in the form of a note in Science^ June 21, 1901, on 

 "What Is lyife?" His investigations in sight, particularly 

 in binocular vision, were, in his own estimation, the most 

 original and independent of his work. 



I believe, too, that in his biological rather than his geologi- 

 cal writings we find most fully displayed the catholicity of his 

 mind toward natural phenomena. Nowhere in geology did 

 he penetrate deeply in technical minutiae. Had we his geologi- 

 cal work only to judge from, we might conclude that he was 

 deficient in the capacity for and delight in that patient, minute 

 working out of details so essential to the highest, safest 

 achievement in any province of physical science. One has, 

 however, but to follow through carefully Part III of the last 

 edition of the volume on "Sight" to find that he did possess 

 it in an eminent degree. Here, far more than anywhere else 

 in his published writings, is displayed the mathematical- 

 physical quality of his mind, which he inherited from his 

 father, and which came out so prominently in his brother, 

 John L,e Conte. 



His way of seeing natural phenomena in the large, and his 

 remarkable power of finding the unifying principles and laws 

 underlying them, though perhaps brought to bear in geology 

 more fruitfully for the science itself than in biology, is shown 

 in its full breadth, and to the understanding of a larger public 



