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SCIENCE. 



[Vol.. II., No. 44. 



of these bad to be studied, aud handled over 

 and over agaiu many times, before reaching the 

 final stages of classification, description, and 

 illustration, we are amazed at the industry and 

 capacity required to do all this scientific work 

 single-handed. Barraude, unlike other volumi- 

 nous authors, had no collaborators. With the 

 exception of an amanuensis, draughtsmen, 

 mechanical prejDarators, and mere collectors, 

 he did all of this vast work. A careful and 

 comprehensive sj'stem was followed in every 

 volume, and in the descriptions of each species ; 

 so that, when one has mastered the intricacies 

 of this, he can at once find everj- thing relating 

 to the history, literature, sti'ucture, relations 

 in time, and geographical distribution, of any 

 species or group. 



Finallj', in the cephalopods, the parts aud in- 

 ternal structures for which this fossil type is 

 remarkable, as well as the embrj-o shells and 

 their characteristics, are -followed out in the 

 same way. We will speak more at length of 

 this tj'pe, parti}' because it was the favorite and 

 most fruitful field of research of this eminent 

 author, and was selected by him as the strong- 

 hold from which to attack the theory of evo- 

 lution, and partly because we have no space 

 to do justice to other departments, where he, 

 however, made important discoveries ; as, for 

 example, among the trilobites. With infinite 

 labor he succeeded in getting series showing 

 the stages of growth of some species among 

 these ancient Crustacea, and taught us that it 

 was possible to study their development even 

 in the Silurian period. Barrande's eflbrts have 

 been frequently referred to as if he were one 

 . of what we might call the numismatic school 

 of geologists, who study animal fossils as if they 

 were medals, useful principally to verify the 

 date and place of formations. On the con- 

 trarj', his technical labors had a distinctly ideal 

 purpose, — the investigation of the evidences 

 for and against the theory of evolution. His 

 education and consequent psychological con- 

 dition placed him in opposition, and, in spite 

 of his honest efforts to treat the subject fairly, 

 controlled his classifications, and warped his 

 judgment. The Cuvierian form of anthropo- 



niorpholog\' was his faith ; and he failed, as 

 have most great executive men, in realizing 

 the dangers of his own mental training, and 

 the need of correcting the personal equation. 



The facts, however, were strong enough 

 even to meet his requirements in some of the 

 groups he studied ; j-et he ended bj- admitting 

 that evolution must, in part at least, be true. 

 He believed that the different types were mirac- 

 ulously created, but that the smaller series 

 which he had traced might have been evolved 

 within certain well-defined limits, fixed accord- 

 ing to the plans of an infinite intelligence, 

 which it was hopeless to try to understand. 

 He was also deficient in that sort of zoological 

 knowledge which is acquired onl}' by research 

 among existing animals, and a familiarity with 

 their modes of development, anatomy, and 

 habits. This explains the apparent inconsis- 

 tencies which show themselves in his text : — 

 the continual admission of transition forms be- 

 tween different species aud smaller groups, and 

 j-et the perpetual denial of the probable former 

 existence of anj' such transitions between what 

 he considered distinct types, whenever he could 

 not actuallj- find , them ; his comparisons be- 

 tween the Silurian and recent Nautili, which he 

 supposed to be verj- similar, when in reality 

 only their adults are similar, the young shells 

 and their developmental stages being wideh' 

 different ; his singular opinion that species like 

 these Silurian Nautili and other forms, which 

 seemed to him out of place and also inexplicable 

 on account of their structure, had been set in the 

 geological record as intentional exceptions, to 

 teach man the divine origin of this apparently 

 modified chaos of gradations. Barraude under- 

 stood, and gave a fair statement of, the ordi- 

 nary views of evolutionary emW-yologists on 

 p. 74 of his ' fitudes g^nerales, Cephalopodes,' 

 and represented a naturalist of this stamp inves- 

 tigating the embrj-os of the fossil Nautiloidea. 

 After finding all the forms of the group from 

 the Silurian to the present time with the same 

 type of apex or 3-oung, he would then neces- 

 sarilj- draw from this embryo a picture of the 

 lost prototypical ancestor of all the Nautiloi- 

 dea. In his next steps he would find the 



