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In the spring of 1852, while still in Charleston, Agassiz heard that the Prix Cuvier, now given for the first time, was awarded to him for the "Poissons Fossiles." This gratified him the more because the work had been so directly bequeathed to him by Cuvier himself. To his mother, through whom he received the news in advance of the official papers, it also gave great pleasure.
During the year 1836, though pushing forward constantly the publication of the "Poissons Fossiles," his "Prodromus of the Class of Echinodermata" appeared in the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Neuchatel, as well as his paper on the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group of the Neuchatel Jura, accompanied by figures.
On the list there were also some of his old European subscribers to the "Poissons Fossiles," among them the King of Prussia, who still continued, under the influence of Humboldt, to feel an interest in his work. September 1, 1856.
Dinkel afterward accompanied Agassiz, as his artist, on repeated journeys, being constantly employed in making illustrations for the "Poissons Fossiles" and the "Poissons d'Eau Douce," as well as for his monographs and smaller papers. The two larger works, the latter of which remained unfinished, were even now in embryo. Not only was Mr.
For years previously bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, stag, ox, horse, and others, had been collected there, and sent from time to time to Paris to be examined and named by Cuvier, who had described them in his Ossements Fossiles.
This, to be sure, was nothing more than William Smith had tried all along to establish regarding lower forms of life; but flesh and blood monsters appeal to the imagination in a way quite beyond the power of mere shells; so the announcement of Cuvier's discoveries aroused the interest of the entire world, and the Ossements Fossiles was accorded a popular reception seldom given a work of technical science a reception in which the enthusiastic approval of progressive geologists was mingled with the bitter protests of the conservatives.
As the generalizations on which all his future zoological researches were based, are sketched in the Preface to his "Poissons Fossiles," so his opening address to the Helvetic Society in 1837 unfolds the glacial period as a whole, much as he saw it at the close of his life, after he had studied the phenomena on three continents.
C. Forsyth Major, 'Sur les Singes fossiles trouves en Italie: 'Soc. Ital. des Sc. At the period and place, whenever and wherever it was, when man first lost his hairy covering, he probably inhabited a hot country; a circumstance favourable for the frugiferous diet on which, judging from analogy, he subsisted.
But hardly more than two centuries have elapsed since this fundamental problem was first exhaustively treated; it was only in the last century that the archaeological value of fossils their importance, I mean, as records of the history of the earth was fully recognised; the first adequate investigation of the fossil remains of any large group of vertebrated animals is to be found in Cuvier's "Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles," completed in 1822; and, so modern is stratigraphical palaeontology, that its founder, William Smith, lived to receive the just recognition of his services by the award of the first Wollaston Medal in 1831.
Correspondence with Humboldt. Marriage. Invitation from Charpentier. Invitation to visit England. Wollaston Prize. First Number of "Poissons Fossiles." Review of the Work. THE following autumn Agassiz assumed the duties of his professorship at Neuchatel.
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