Geology and Mineralogy. 65 



study into the methods of improving the construction of optical 

 glasses, both for the telescope and microscope, have enabled him 

 to ]3resent this subject in a particularly new and valuable form. 



II. Geology and Mineralogy. 



1. Lamarck, the founder of Evolution, his life and work, with 

 translations of his writings on Organic Evolution / by Alpheus 

 S. Packard; pp. 1-451. New York, 1901 (Longmans, Green & 

 Co.). — A very great service has been rendered by Professor Pack- 

 ard in bringing to light so full an account of the views of this 

 most important of the pre-Darwinian writers on evolution. The 

 volume is the result of an assiduous search among the available 

 records of his life-work to be found in the Paris libraries and in 

 the town of Bazentin-le Petit, where Lamarck was born in 1744. 



Lamarck was a contemporary of Buffon, Jussieu, Haiiy, Cuvier 

 and Geoffroy St. Hiliare ; also Rousseau was a friend of his 

 youth. He was busy proclaiming a universal theory of evolution 

 within the walls of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle while the 

 Reign of Terror was raging in the streets of Paris without. For 

 it must be noted that his was not a theory of organic evolution 

 alone, as we now know it, but, he claimed, " that the minerals 

 and rocks composing the earth's crust are all of organic origin 

 including even granite " (p. 120). 



His first scientific work was as a Botanist and his "Flore Fran- 

 faise," published in 1778, in three volumes, was highly appre- 

 ciated, won him a place in the Academy and the familiar title of 

 "the French Linne." 



His later work in Zoology is also excellent. " There has never 

 been any lack of appreciation of his labors as a systematic zoolo- 

 gist," says his biographer (p. 180). 



The same may be said of his descriptive work in Paleontology 

 His " Coquilles fossiles des environs de Paris " will ever rank on 

 a par with Cuvier's " Ossements Fossiles " among the foundations 

 of the new science of Paleontology. But we note that it was 

 Cuvier who first recognized in the fossil bones of the Paris basin 

 evidence of extinct species of organisms formerly inhabiting the 

 earth; while it was Lamarck, the transformist, who denied "that 

 any species can really be lost or extinct" (p. 129). His specula- 

 tions in Geology were crude and not in advance of his age ; they 

 no longer have a place in science. In general Physiology his 

 speculations about spontaneous generation, subtile vapours and 

 fluids, orgasm and caloric dropped out of sight with the advance 

 of scientific knowledge. His speculations in physical science are 

 described by his biographer as "physico-chemical vagaries." 

 His strenuous advocacy of theories of all kinds, without taking 

 the pains to adapt them to the opinions of his fellow scientists, 

 or to establish their verity by actual observation, seems to have 

 been the chief reason for the neglect which they and he suffered 

 in his own time. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Yol. XIII, No. 73.— January,' 1902. 

 5 



