422 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
beginning of his life as a student under Louis Agassiz, he had 
become an evolutionist (Cycle in the life of the individual, etc., 
1897). 
His studies, carried on in an independent spirit, after some grop- 
ings in the dark, as'seen in his paper on ‘‘Parallelism,” etc., led him 
into the path Avhich Lamarck had blazed out half a century previous, 
though the landmarks had been overgrown or concealed by the 
temporary growth of the underbrush of reactionary thought. 
Natural selection as an active or efficient cause never appealed to 
him; he regarded it as simply expressing the results of the action 
of the Lamarckian factors. 
AVorking alone year after year on the rich and Avell selected col¬ 
lection of nautiloids and ammonites in the Museum of comparative 
zoology, young Hyatt, while doing an immense amount of purely 
objective work, classificatory and stratigraphic, finally put himself 
in the front ranks of paleontologists. He became a leader in the 
modern methods, a master, and lived to see his vieAvs as to the 
classification and genesis of the shelled cephalopods accepted by 
such men as Neumayr, Zittel, and others in Germany, by Bernard 
in France, and by the younger generation of paleontologists in 
America. 
AVe would not forget the debt we owe to James Hall, Billings, 
Meek, AA^achsmuth and Springer, AYhitfield, and others; to inverte¬ 
brate paleontologists in Europe, such as Quenstedt, D’Orbigny, 
Suess, and especially the illustrious Barrande, but as regards 
invertebrate paleontology. Dr. Hyatt led the way to a new phase 
of the science. For after the date of the appearance of Darwin’s 
“ Origin of species,” biology and particularly the study of extinct 
beings entered upon an entirely new line of development. 
The shell-bearing cephalopods, particularly the ammonites, are 
especially favorable for the line of work Professor Hyatt took up. 
He had access to large series of these forms; he Avas led perforce to 
study Avith care their geological succession, their variations, and 
probable migrations. Such a study carried out in a broad way by 
a good field naturalist, Avas bionomics carried back through the 
geological ages. He soon established the lines of descent of genetic 
series, and Avorked out the phylogeny of this or that group, where the 
materials Avere especially suggestiA^e and faA^orable, and this led him 
to consider the action, throughout past ages, of the Lamarckian 
