Fbbbuart 11, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



201 



to all. What more can psychology tell us 

 than that these inventions were thought 

 out by somebody. So when a culture com- 

 plex has been analyzed and found to rest 

 upon the association of two or more ideas, 

 we do not thereby raise a specific psycho- 

 logical problem at all. The problem we do 

 raise is as to where and at what relative 

 points in man's career did these ideas ap- 

 pear, and the solution is to be sought in the 

 historical relations of the people among 

 whom they originated and not in innate 

 psychological characters. 



Our purpose is not to deny the existence 

 of a psychological problem in culture ; far 

 from it. "We are only pointing out what 

 aspects of the problem can consistently be 

 subjected to psychological methods and 

 calling formal attention to the very crude 

 method of taking learned activities for in- 

 nate ones and thereby explaining cultural 

 phenomena. Psychology can be of the 

 very greatest service to anthropology by 

 discovering the relations between man's 

 innate and cultural equipments. 



Clabk "WiSStEE 



The American Museum 

 OF Natural History 



CHARLES RENE ZEILLER 



Lorraine has produced many men who have 

 adorned the annals of the sciences, arts and 

 politics of France, l^one are more worthy of 

 honor than Professor Zeiller, the dean of paleo- 

 botanists, who passed away at his home in 

 Paris on November 27. 



Born at Nancy on January 14, 184Y, he was 

 educated at the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole 

 des Mines, so that naturally he was a member 

 of the auxiliary corps of engineers during the 

 Pranco-Prussian war. His father was engi- 

 neer-in-chief of bridges and highways of Lor- 

 raine and on the maternal side he was de- 

 scended from the sculptor Guibal. 



Although the illustrious mantle of Brongni- 

 art and Saporta has long rested on Zeiller's 



shoulders his earliest contributions were not 

 paleobotanical, but metallurgical and geolog- 

 ical, and published in the Annales des Mines 

 in 1870 and again in 1871, both devoted to the 

 Eifel region. Lq 1873 he published a memoir 

 on the eruptive rocks and metalliferous veins 

 of the Sohemnitz district. His first paleobo- 

 tanical contribution was an analysis of 

 Schimper's great work, " Traite de Paleon- 

 tologie vegetale " and published in the Revue 

 scientifique in the spring of 1874, thus indi- 

 cating the trend of Zeiller's mind at that time 

 and foreshadowing the field of endeavor to 

 which he was to so successfully devote the 

 mature years of a reasonably long but never 

 robust life. 



As an engineer of mines the fossil floras 

 associated with the coal were the subject of 

 his chief professional interest, although Zeil- 

 ler was not a narrow specialist, but a contribu- 

 tor to all phases of paleobotanical activity. 

 With a rare facility he was equally effective 

 in describing the histology of Sphenophyllum 

 and Lepidostrohus or the impressions of plants 

 of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic or Cenozoic. The 

 last paper from his hand that I have received 

 was an account of the Wealden flora of Peru, 

 and in his last letter, written just before the 

 end, he asked me to send him a copy of Wal- 

 cott's recent paper on Algonkian Algae. It was 

 this world-wide interest combined with a philo- 

 sophical temperament that made the many 

 annual reviews of the progress of paleobotany 

 published in the Annuaire universel de Gio- 

 logie and the Revue hibliograpliique of such 

 lasting value. 



Zeiller's first original contribution to paleo- 

 botany was an account of the flora of Ternera 

 in Chili published in 1875, and the wide in- 

 terest and facility of treatment are shown in 

 a succession of works whose stratigraphic 

 range is from the Devonian of Pas-de-Calais 

 to the Tertiary of Tonkin-China, embracing 

 discussions of floras of the Carboniferous, ■ 

 Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous and 

 Tertiary. Outside his native land he contrib- 

 uted to the paleobotany of Spain, India, the ^ 

 Vosges, the Balkans, Kew Caledonia, Indo- 

 China, Madagascar, Central and South Africa, 



