92 



LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



where they were then found ; that the animals had 

 given to the figured stones all their different shapes, 

 and that he boldly defied all the school of Aristotle 

 to attack his proofs." * 



Then succeeded, at the end of the seventeenth 

 century, the forerunners of modern geology : Steno 

 (1669), Leibnitz (1683), Ray (1692), Woodward (1695), 

 Vallisneri (172 1), while Moro published his views in 

 1745. In the eighteenth century Reaumur f (1720) 

 presented a paper on the fossil shells of Touraine. 



Cuvier % thus pays his respects, in at least an un- 

 sympathetic way, to the geological essayists and 

 compilers of the seventeenth century : 



" The end of the seventeenth century lived to see 

 the birth of a new science, which took, in its infancy, 

 the high-sounding name of 'Theory of the Earth.' 

 Starting from a small number of facts, badly observed, 

 connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pre- 

 tended to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it 

 were, play with them, and to create their history. 

 Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, alto- 

 gether seemed to render it foreign to the other 

 sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a 

 long time cast it out of the circle of their studies." 



Their views, often premature, composed of half- 

 truths, were mingled with glaring errors and fantastic 

 misconceptions, but were none the less germinal. 

 Leibnitz was the first to propose the nebular hypoth- 

 esis, which was more fully elaborated by Kant and 

 Laplace. Buffon, influenced by the writing of Leib- 



* Quoted from Flouren's £loge Historiqtie de Georges Cuvier, 

 Hoefer's edition. Paris, 1854. 



f Remarqites sur les Coquilles fossiles de qtielques Cantons de la 

 Tournine. Mem. Acad. Sc. Paris, 1720, pp. 400-417. 



\ Eloge Historiqtie de Werner,-^. I13. 



