366 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 



The Palseontographical Society was established in London 

 in the year 1847 f r tne purpose of illustrating and describing 

 the whole of the British Fossil Species. The work it has 

 accomplished is most praiseworthy. Each year has seen the 

 publication of a volume containing monographs by the first 

 specialists. Among the contributors have been Richard 

 Owen, H. Milne-Edwards, E. Forbes, T. Davidson, H. 

 Woodward, Ray Lankester, Traquair, Nicholson, Lapworth, 

 Hinde, and many others whose names have a world-wide 

 repute in connection with their special researches of animal 

 groups. The publications of the Palseontographical Society 

 undoubtedly take the first place in the literature of fossils, 

 although the monographs are confined to British fossils. A 

 more universal character is presented by the volumes of 

 the Palceontographica, a periodical which was commenced in 

 1846 by W. Dunker and H. von Meyer. For the last three 

 decades the Pal&ontographica has been conducted by K. von 

 Zittel, and now numbers forty-six volumes. Similar palseonto- 

 graphical journals have been instituted in Austria-Hungary, 

 France, and Italy. 



Some of the more important works which treat fossils rather 

 from their biological than their stratigraphical standpoint are 

 Buckland's Mineralogy and Geology (1836), G. A. Mantell's 

 Medals of Creation (1844), and the excellent Trait'e elementaire 

 de Paleontologie^ published by F. J. Pictet at Paris (1844-46). 

 Buckland's widely-circulated book was translated into German 

 by the elder Agassiz. In the short geological introduction, 

 Buckland impresses upon the reader the confirmation given 

 by the geological record to the words of Holy Writ ; then 

 follows an attractively written account of fossil organisms, in 

 the course of which frequent reference is made to the modes 

 of life of the various animal groups, and to the relations 

 subsisting between the fossil and living representatives of 

 organised existences. 



Pictet 1 treated palaeontology as an essential part of the studies 



1 Frar^ois Jules Pictet, born on the 27th September 1809, scion of an 

 aristocratic family in Geneva. He studied Law and Science at the Geneva 

 Academy, and went in 1830 to Paris, where he associated much with 

 Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Blainville, and Audouin. In 1833 he 

 returned to Geneva, interested himself chiefly in entomology and Compara- 

 tive Anatomy, and married Miss de la Rive, a grand-daughter of Necker 

 de Saussure. In 1835, Pictet was appointed Professor of Zoology at the 

 Academy, but retired in 1859, in order to devote himself wholly to his 



