A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



his epoch-making paper on geology finds curiously a 

 duplication in the fact that Wells's volume contained 

 also his essay on Albinism, in which the doctrine of 

 natural selection was for the first time formulated, as 

 Charles Darwin freely admitted after his own efforts 

 had made the doctrine famous. 



ISOTHERMS AND OCEAN CURRENTS 



The very next year after Dr. Wells's paper was pub- 

 lished there appeared in France the third volume of 

 the M6moires de Physique et de Ckimie de la Soci6te 

 d'Arciieil, and a new epoch in meteorology was inaugu- 

 rated. The society in question was numerically an in- 

 consequential band, listing only a dozen members; 

 but every name was a famous one: Arago, Berard, Ber- 

 thollet, Biot, Chaptal, De Candolle, Dulong, Gay- 

 Lussac, Humboldt, Laplace, Poisson, and Thenard 

 rare spirits every one. Little danger that the memoirs 

 of such a band would be relegated to the dusty shelves 

 where most proceedings of societies belong no milk- 

 for-babes fare would be served to such a company. 



The particular paper which here interests us closes 

 this third and last volume of memoirs. It is entitled 

 "Des Lignes Isothermes et de la Distribution Je la Cha- 

 leur sur le Globe." The author is Alexander Humboldt. 

 Needless to say, the topic is handled in a masterly 

 manner. The distribution of heat on the surface of the 

 globe, on the mountain-sides, in the interior of the 

 earth; the causes that regulate such distribution; the 

 climatic results these are the topics discussed. But 

 what gives epochal character to the paper is the intro- 

 duction of those isothermal lines circling the earth in 



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