142 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



I doubt that theor}', because any cargoes which are 

 landed in the small port of Shoreham, in Sussex, are 

 extremel)- unlikely to have come from Southern or 

 Central Europe, where C. platypteva occurs, as they 

 consist chiefly of coals, timber, potatoes and goods 

 from our own and Continental pOrts not far distant. 

 The harbour is so shallow at Shoreham that vessels 

 of any great size could not enter. It will be remem- 

 bered when the late William Prest took a specimen 

 of Eiipithecia extensaria near Hull, many persons, 

 including himself, believed it to have been a stray 

 specimen introduced from the Baltic region with 



some ship's ballast. So it remained for several 

 years unique as British, no one troubling to search 

 for the species. Now, thanks to Mr. Porritt, every 

 lepidopterist in this country probably knows that 

 Eiipithecia extensaria occurs locally wherever the 

 sea-wormwood grows, from Hull southwards, down 

 to the Norfolk coast. This incident shows how 

 unwise it is to take any statement for granted in 

 connection with scientific investigation, and how 

 necessary it is to verify every fact. 



I, KoHhumberland Avenue, London, W.C.; 

 October, 1896. 



THE RISE OF PALAEONTOLOGY. 



By Arthur J. Maslen. 



T T OW often does the student, after a few days' 

 fossil-hunting, pause to consider, or even 

 think of considering, in the midst of his chipping 

 and trimming, his glueing and w'ashing, the history 

 of that important branch of science, palaeontology, 

 to which he may, perchance, contribute his mite ? 

 How engrossing, how sublime, how helpful, to 

 read the lives of the great heroes who made our 

 science. When we think of Smith, of Cuvier, of 

 Lamarck, of Owen, and ahost of other worthies, who_ 

 each fought almost alone the battle which took us 

 out of the misty realms of metaphysical speculation 

 and landed us with infinite labour on our way to 

 the certitudes of positive science ; when we think 

 of all this, and then contemplate the fact that the 

 last hundred years include the whole of their lives, 

 we feel that the progress of palaeontology has been 

 indeed great and rapid. 



Looking back along the path of history into the 

 dimmer regions of antiquity, v.-e seek in vain for 

 the name or place of him who first found, embedded 

 in the very foundations as it were of the earth, 

 a shell, a tooth, or a bone, and pondered over the 

 causes which brought the thing into such a curious 

 position. Entering the region of real knowledge, the 

 antiquity of the study of fossils is attested by the 

 fact that the great Herodotus himself describes the 

 nummulites which make up the building-material 

 of the pyramids of Egypt — then, more than now, the 

 home of mystery — as the " remains of lentils." The 

 Greek philosopher, Xenophanes, 500 years before 

 the Christian era, was influenced in his lofty 

 philosophical rhapsodies by his observations on 

 the fossil remains exposed to his view in the 

 quarries of Syracuse. 



Notwithstanding the fact that since this early 

 time fossils are occasionally mentioned by philo- 

 sophers, geographers and others, and notwith- 

 standing the many speculations respecting their 

 origin and nature by the philosophers at the revival 

 of learning, it was not until the present century 



that we came to what we ma}' term a scientific 

 knowledge of fossils — the work, as pioneers, of 

 Cuvier, Lamarck and others. Indeed, the term 

 "palaeontology," the study of ancient life (in fact 

 the study itself in the sense of the meaning of the 

 word) is so entirely modern, that so far as is known, 

 Pusch, in a work on the geology of Poland, pub- 

 lished in 1837, first used it ; and it was only made 

 popular by the insistent use of the term by A. 

 D'Orbigny about 1840. 



In attempting to give a brief sketch of the history 

 of palaeontology, using the term in the sense of 

 the study of fossils, it will be convenient to divide 

 the time into four periods : 



ist Period. — -Aristotle (e.g. 300) — Leonardo da 

 Vinci (a.d. 1500). 



2nd Period. — Beginning of the i6th century — - 

 Linnaeus (1766). 



3rd Period. — Linnaeus — Darwin (1859). 



4th Period. — 1859 — present day. 



During the long interval of time represented by 

 the first period, the progress of science was indeed 

 slow, if it was not rather retrogressive, for the 

 healthy common sense of the ancient Greeks, of 

 Xenophanes and Aristotle, had led them to assert 

 without hesitation the organic nature of the fossils 

 they saw. Again, towards the end of the period a 

 few men, including Leonardo da Vinci and others, 

 struggling to free themselves from the maze of 

 metaphysical speculation and fancy which con- 

 stituted the foundation of the natural knowledge of 

 their time, were able to take just views of the 

 nature of fossils and to claim for them, in spite of 

 the school-men, their true nature as the remains of 

 once -living animals and plants. To Aristotle 

 indeed must be given the credit of being the 

 founder of the inductive system of reasoning, 

 which forms the basis on which modern science 

 has been reared and which was almost lost in the 

 darkness of the a priori reasoning of the middle 

 ages. 



