134 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



and their relations to geology may be seen in his 

 later memoirs, Sur les Fossiles des environs de Paris* 



" The determination of the characters, both generic 

 and specific, of animals of which we find the fossil 

 remains in almost all the dry parts of the continents 

 and large islands of our globe will be, from several 

 points of view, a thing extremely useful to the prog- 

 ress of natural history. At the outset, the more this 

 determination is advanced, the more will it tend to 

 complete our knowledge in regard to the species 

 which exist in nature and of those which have ex- 

 isted, as it is true that some of them have been lost, 

 as we have reason to believe, at least as concerns the 

 large animals. Moreover, this same determination 

 will be singularly advantageous for the advancement 

 of geology ; for the fossil remains in question may be 

 considered, from their nature, their condition, and 

 their situation, as authentic monuments of the rev- 

 olutions which the surface of our globe has under- 

 gone, and they can throw a strong light on the nature 

 and character of these revolutions." 



This series of papers on the fossils of the Paris 

 tertiary basin extended through the first eight vol- 

 umes of the Annales, and were gathered into a 

 volume published in 1806. In his descriptions his 

 work was comparative, the fossil species being com- 

 pared with their living representatives. The thirty 

 plates, containing 483 figures representing 184 species 

 (exclusive of those figured by Brard), were afterwards 

 published, with the explanations, but not the descrip- 

 tions, as a separate volume in i823.f This (the text 



* Annales du Museum d'Hisioire Nalurelle, vi., 1805, pp. 222-228. 



f Recueil de Planches des Coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris 

 (Paris, 1823). There are added two plates of fossil fresh-water shells 

 (twenty-one species of Limnjea, etc.) by Brard, with sixty-two figures. 



