WORK IN PALEONTOLOGY 131 



tions of the earlier species as such. (.The little that 

 was known to Lamarck at the time he wrote, pre- 

 vented his knowing that species became extinct, as 

 we say, or recognizing the fact that while some 

 species, genera, and even orders may rise, culminate, 

 and die, others are modified, while a few persist from 

 one period to another.) He did, however, see clearly 

 that, taking plant and animal life as a whole, it under- 

 went a slow modification, the later forms being the 

 descendants of the earlier; and this truth is the central 

 one of modern palaeontology. " 



Lamarck's first memoir on fossil shells, in which he 

 described many new species, was published in 1802, 

 after the appearance of his Hydroge'ologie, to which 

 he refers. It was the first of a series of descriptive 

 papers, which appeared at intervals from 1802 to 

 1806. He does not fail to open the series of memoirs 

 with some general remarks, which prove his broad, 

 philosophic spirit, that characterizing the founder of 

 a new science. He begins by saying that the fossil 

 forms have their analogues in the tropical seas. He 

 claims that there was evident proof that these 

 molluscs could not have lived in a climate like that 

 of places in which they now occur, instancing Nauti- 

 lius pompilius, which now lives in the seas of warm 

 countries ; also the presence of exotic ferns, palms, 

 fossil amber, fossil gum-elastic, besides the occurrence 

 of fossil crocodiles and elephants both in France and 

 Germany.* 



* It should be stated that the first observer to inaugurate the com- 

 parative method was that remarlcable forerunner of modern palseon- 

 tologists, Steno the Dane, who was for a while a professor at Padua. 



