138 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



later (1780) Blumenbach confirmed Camper's identifi- 

 cation, and gave the name of Elephas primigenius to 

 the Siberian mammoth. 



" Beckman" [says Blainville] "as early as 1772 had 

 even published a very good memoir on the way in 

 which we should consider fossil organic bodies ; he 

 was also the first to propose using the name fossilia 

 instead oi petrefacta, and to name the science which 

 studies fossils Oryctology. It was also he who admit- 

 ted that these bodies should be studied with reference 

 to the class, order, genus, species, as we would do with 

 a living being, and he compared them, which he called 

 prototypes,* with their analogues. He then passes in 

 review, following the zoological order, the fossils which 

 had been discovered by naturalists. He even described 

 one of them as a new species, besides citing, with an 

 erudition then rare, all the authors and all the works 

 where they were described. He did no more than to 

 indicate but not name each species. Thus he was 

 the means of soon producing a number of German 

 authors who made little advance from lack of ana- 

 tomical knowledge ; but afterwards the task fell into 

 the hands of men capable of giving to the newly 

 created palaeontology a remarkable impulse, and one 

 which since then has not abated." 



Blumenbach,f the most eminent and all-round Ger- 

 man anatomist and physiologist of his time, one of 

 the founders of anthropology as well as of palaeontol- 



* Novi Commentarii Soc. Sc. Goettingensis, torn, ii., Commentat., 

 torn. i. 



f His first palasontological article appears to have been one entitled 

 Beiirdge zur Naturgeschichte der Vorwelt (Lichtenberg, Voigfs 

 Magaz., Bd. vi, S. 4, 1790, pp. 1-17). I have been unable to ascer- 

 tain in which of his publications he describes and names the cave^ 

 bear. 



