234 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



THE RISE OF PALAEONTOLOGY. 



Bv Arthur J. Maslex. 



iCoiiHnued from page 184.) 



TT ZHIJLE vertebrate palaeontology was thus 

 rapidly advancing under the guidance of 

 Cuvier, Agassiz, Owen and others ; the study of 

 fossil-remains on the invertebrate side was making 

 an equally rapid march under the guidance of 

 Lamarck. Chevalier de Lamarck was bom in 

 Picardy in 1744, and, after relinquishing the 

 Church, for which he was educated, and spending 

 some time in the army, in 1773 b^an his scientific 

 studies on the invertebrates. Working with Cux'ier, 

 he studied both living and fossil forms, and at the 

 b^inning of thi<; century published works in which 

 he classi&ed the fossil with the living forms. He 

 was quickly followed by others, some of whom 

 adopted the T.iTin?p.a,n system of naming, while a 

 section, unfortunately, did not. Among these vre 

 may mention James Park in son, who, while prac- 

 tising medicine in Hoxton, tells us, in 1804, that : 

 " Impelled by that eager curiosity which a view of 

 a former world must excite in every inquisitive 

 mind, I long and earnestly sought for informa- 

 tion respecting these wonderful substances from 

 every source to which I could obtain access." In 

 time, after acquiring a " little fortune," he quaintly 

 remarks that he •' quitted the busy part of the 

 world for ever," and published a great work in 

 three volumes, well illustrated with beautiful 

 figures, and entitled " Organic Remains of a Former 

 World : being an Examination of the Mineralized 

 Remains of the V^etables and Animals of the 

 Antedilu\-ian World, generally termed Extraneous 

 Fossils." 



The Mosaic deluge was still regarded m^ many 

 as the cause of the burying of the organisms which 

 we now find as fossil remains — an idea which died 

 but slowly. The celebrated Dr. William Buckland 

 had, about this time, been promoted to the newly- 

 endowed special readership in Geology at Oxford, 

 and his inaugural address on this occasion was 

 afterwards published under the title of " Vindiciae 

 Geologicae ; or, the Connection of Geology with 

 Religion Explained " ; while a few years later, as the 

 result of a number of original researches on cavern 

 deposits, he published his "ReUquise Dilu\"ianae; 

 or. Observations on the Organic Remains in Caves, 

 etc., attesting the action of an Universal Deluge." 

 His work, as one of the earliest English practical 

 geologists, was of much value, although of course 

 his conclusions were warped to some extent by his 

 particular theories, some of which he himself was 

 lead subsequently to modify in the celebrated 

 Bridgewater treatise on " Geology and Mineralogy 

 considered with reference to Natural Theology." 



In the T%T>e Collections Gallery at the Natural 

 History Museum, South Kensington, is to be seen 

 a small collection which is perhaps the most 

 generally interesting of aU shown there to the 

 student of geological history. It is that formed by 

 William Smith, " the Father of English Geolog5%" 

 to whom we owe the first successful attempt not 

 only to show that there is an invariable order of 

 superposition of strata, but also that each formation 

 can be recognized by the peculiar fossils vrhich it 

 contains, thus giving to fossils a geological sig- 

 nificance in addition to the zoological one which 

 they were already beginning to possess. No longer 

 were fossils mere zoological curiosities ; they v.-ere 

 now, as Mantell caUed them later, " ^ledals of 

 Creation." 



Long and fierce had been the contest as to 

 the agencies concerned in the formation of rocks. 

 The two rival schools of thought — the Vulcanists 

 who traced everything to the action of fire on 

 the one hand, and the Neptimists, led by Werner, 

 with their water theories on the other — had been 

 silenced by the happ}- compromise of Dr. John 

 Hutton, who maintained in his famous "Theory 

 of the Earth, ' ' pubUshed at Edinburgh a little more 

 than a century- ago, that the stratified rocks owe 

 their origin to the action of water ; whilst the 

 intrusive unstratified masses were the result of the 

 action of heat. This was in truth the foundation of 

 modem geology ; but it was left for William Smith 

 to show us how the stratified rocks can be made to 

 teU the wonderful and fascinating story of the earth's 

 past history, and the succession of steps by which 

 the animals and plants of the present are linked 

 with those of the past. William Smith was bom 

 at Churchill, a village in Oxfordshire, in 1769, and 

 was the son of a small farmer and mechanic, who, 

 however, died when the boy v.as at an early age, 

 lea\Tng him to the guardianship of an imcle, who 

 apparently had but httle sympathy w^ith the boy, 

 who would persist in collecting "pundibs' (Tere- 

 bratulas) and "quoit-stones" (Clypeus). How- 

 ever, he taught himself the rudiments of geometry 

 and land-surveying, and in 1793 obtained an 

 appointment to sur\-ey a proposed coal-canal near 

 Bath. Here then were opportunities for geological 

 work, opportimities which, when followed out, 

 yielded to him the magnificent results we have 

 mentioned, and stratigraphical geologj', thus 

 formded by an Englishman, remains to this day 

 a di\dsion of the science in which Englishmen 

 are in the front rank. In those days there were 

 no societies devoted to geology through which 



