XXX11 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Dr. Heinrich G. Bronn, Councillor and Professor at the University 

 of Heidelberg, Knight of the Grand-Ducal Order of the Lion of Baden - 

 Zahringen, was born at Ziegelhausen, near Heidelberg, and passed the 

 greater part of his youth at that place. In his twenty-second year he 

 published a work on botany, of such excellence that it procured for 

 him a prize and the degree of Doctor from the faculty of Medicine at 

 Heidelberg. In the next ten years he zealously employed himself, 

 while in the Mineral Office at Heidelberg, in palseontological research, 

 treasuring up materials to be used in his later works. At this time, 

 too, he commenced his travels, and, hammer in hand, examined the 

 then little-known formations of Upper Italy. His geological descrip- 

 tions of that country, combined with his specification of the Tertiary 

 fossils, show his accuracy as a geologist and critical palaeontologist of 

 no common order. But his first great work was the ' Lethaea 

 Geognostica,' published in 1835-37, which at once placed him in the 

 foremost rank of European palaeontologists of the day. 



In this work he laid down the results of the observation and 

 experience of years, giving a survey of the successive geological 

 epochs in a manner that powerfully aided the study of our science 

 in Germany. Its contents have since become common property, from 

 the numerous popular works that have drawn their materials from its 

 stores ; and though, in the progress of science, the knowledge it 

 contains has been extended and modified, it still remains one of the 

 foundations of German stratigraphical geology. 



It is needless, in this place, to enumerate all the various works of 

 which Bronn was the author, embracing, as they do, memoirs on the 

 geology and palaeontology of the Apennines and Pyrenees, and of 

 various districts in France and Germany ; but there is one of them, 

 ' The History of Nature ' (Geschichte der Natur), which deserves 

 especial notice. In this work, the first part of which was published 

 in 1842, beginning at the beginning, in true German style, he first 

 gives a brief digest of astronomical phenomena, then of chemical and 

 physical geology, and of the state of physical geography, thus opening 

 the general subject before proceeding to the second part, where, more 

 completely in his own domain, he treats of the first appearance of 

 species and their development in time and space. In one of the 

 chapters of this work, Bronn, coinciding with Cuvier, maintains the 

 immutability of species, allowing, at the same time, many instances 

 of degeneracy, deformity, crossing, and possible mutation. To him 

 such mutations merely resolved themselves into the development of 

 races, varieties, and sub-species. Accordingly, he was directly op- 

 posed to the ideas of Lamarck and GeofFroy St. Hilaire, looking, as 

 he then did, upon each species as a direct act of creation. The third 

 part of the ' History of Nature ' includes the " Index (Part I. No- 

 menclator Paloeontologicus, Part II. Enumerator Palaeontologicus) 

 Palaeontologicus," published in conjunction with H. von Meyer and 

 Goppert. By far the greater part of this work was executed by 

 Bronn ; and it must have required no ordinary amount of enthusiastic 

 steadfastness of purpose to execute a labour involving the systematic 

 reduction of all the lists of fossils published in works in many Ian- 



