go LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



(an X.), or ten years before the first publication of 

 Cuvier's famous Discours sur les Revolutions de la 

 Surface du Globe (1812). Written in his popular and 

 attractive style, and thoroughly in accord with the 

 cosmological and theological prepossessions of the 

 age, the Discours was widely read, and passed through 

 many editions. On the other hand, the Hydro- 

 gMogie died stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a 

 reader, never reaching a second edition, and is now, 

 like most of his works, a bibliographical rarity. 



The only writer who has said a word in its favor, 

 or contrasted it with the work of Cuvier, is the ju- 

 dicious and candid Huxley, who, though by no means 

 favorable to Lamarck's factors of evolution, frankly 

 said: 



" The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in 

 support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses 

 of special creation and of catastrophism ; and the wild 

 speculations of the Discours sur les Revolutions de la 

 Surface du Globe were held to be models of sound 

 scientific thinking, while the really much more sober 

 and philosophic hypotheses of the HydrogMogie were 

 scouted." * 



Before summarizing the contents of this book, let 

 us glance at the geological atmosphere — thin and 

 tenuous as it was then — in which Lamarck lived. 

 The credit of being the first observer, before Steno 

 (1669), to state that fossils are the remains of animals 

 which were once alive, is due to an Italian, Frasca- 

 tero, of Verona, who wrote in 1517. 



* Evolution in Biology, in Darwiniana, New York, i8g6, p. 212. 



