November !i5, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



729 



would have flinched before the ' gizzard ' prop- 

 osition. 



Had Dr. Williston stated "his syllogism as 

 f oUovs's : ' All birds have feathers ; the sage 

 hen is a bird; therefore the sage hen has 

 feathers ' — he would have substituted the ex- 

 act converse of our argument with respect to 

 reptiles. Negative evidence is, of course, un- 

 convincing, and there are paleontologists who 

 may say : ' It is conceivable that soine reptiles 

 had feathers, though none are now known to 

 possess them; therefore, it is possible that 

 plesiosaurs (and other reptiles) had feathers.' 

 To them we answer, it is also possible that 

 plesiosaurs rejoiced in having a vermiform 

 appendix; and the author* who recently de- 

 scribed a specimen of Hyhodus with a school 

 of Belemnites inside, might have gone a step 

 further than he did, postulating appendicitis 

 as cause of death. As it was, we shall hardly 

 contest his verdict in pronouncing it acute 

 indigestion : ' bei der Verdauung traten dann 

 Beschwerden ein.' ' 



INTRODUCTION OF THE TEEMS GEOLOGY AND 

 PALEONTOLOGY IN NATURAL SCIENCE. 



The opinions of so eminent an authority 

 as Dr. S. F. Emmons are entitled to universal 

 esteem. When this learned writer tells us in 

 Science (No. 512) that he ' should have con- 

 sidered it a useless waste of time to have 

 searched all ancient literature to find out by 

 whom it [the term geology] was first used,' 

 most of us will cheerfully agree with him. 



When, however, he reiterates the statement 

 that ' de Saussure was the first geologist to 

 use this term ' in its modern acceptation, only 

 a moment's time is required to satisfy one's 

 self of its historical inaccuracy. In the work 

 of von Zittel to which Dr. Emmons refers 

 (page 106 of the German edition), the credit 

 for having introduced the term geology in a 

 scientific sense is awarded to Deluc (1778). 

 Deluc and de Saussure were contemporary 

 scientists, but the employment of the term 

 geology by the former antedates that of the 

 latter. 



If one can spare a moment further, still 



* Campbell Brown, ' Ueber das genus Hybodus,' 

 etc., Pala"ontogr., 46, p. 163 (1900). 



without ' searching all ancient literature,' one 

 may consult a standard authority like Mur- 

 ray's 'New English Dictionary' (Oxford). 

 Under ' geology ' the earlier use of the term 

 by de Bury in 1344, and by E. Sessa in 1687, 

 is referred to, after which it is remarked: 

 ' So far as at present known, the use ef the 

 word as a name for a distinct branch of phys- 

 ical science occurs first in English,' references 

 being given to E. Warren (1690), B. Martin 

 (1735) and Bailey (1736). Von Zittel is also 

 authority for the statement that the term 

 paleontology was introduced almost simul- 

 taneously by de Blainville and Eischer von 

 Waldheim during the third decade of the 

 nineteenth century. 



COSMOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS. 



The appearance of a revised edition of 

 Hugo Berg-er's ' History of Comparative Geog- 

 raphy amongst the Greeks ' furnishes occasion 

 for a brief notice of this exceedingly valuable 

 repository of information.* Of wider scope, 

 yet more compact than Bunbury's and other 

 standard histories of ancient geography, the 

 plan of the present work aims to provide an 

 epitome of all the essential facts, together 

 with a profusion of references to original 

 sources, and to commentaries upon the same. 



Although dealing primarily with descriptive 

 geography in the pre-Christian era, the sub- 

 ject necessarily includes eosmical, geological 

 and physiographic aspects of earth-science in 

 general; and from this it follows that the 

 attempt to trace interrelations between authors 

 belonging to different periods and schools, 

 with the aid of our present materials, is an 

 intricate task. Herein probably lies the ex- 

 planation of the numerous repetitions and 

 cross-references which occur throughout the 

 work, a feature which is no less conspicuous 

 in Humboldt's ' Cosmos ' and similar treatises. 



The critical acuraen of the author may be 

 best appreciated through comparison of judg- 

 ments passed by him upon this or that heroic 

 figure in science, compiler, or commentator, 

 with the judgments already passed upon them 

 by equally erudite explorers of the same field. 

 Divergence of opinion is to be noted in many 



* ' Geschiehte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde 

 der Griechen' (Leipzig, 1903), pp. 662. 



