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Updated: June 6, 2025
The celebrated palaeontologist, Bronn, at the close of his German translation of this work, asks how, on the principle of natural selection, can a variety live side by side with the parent species?
And to this end let us define somewhat more exactly the extent of these pretensions of palaeontology. Every one is aware that Professor Bronn's "Untersuchungen" and Professor Pictet's "Traité de Paléontologie" are works of standard authority, familiarly consulted by every working palaeontologist.
It is no easy matter to find clear and unmistakable evidence of filiation among fossil animals; for, in order that such evidence should be quite satisfactory, it is necessary that we should be acquainted with all the most important features of the organisation of the animals which are supposed to be thus related, and not merely with the fragments upon which the genera and species of the palaeontologist are so often based.
James Orr, of Edinburg University, says: "The greatest scientists and theologians of Europe are now pronouncing Darwinism to be absolutely dead." Dr. Traas, a famous palaeontologist, concludes: "The idea that mankind is descended from any simian species whatever, is certainly the most foolish ever put forth by a man writing on the history of man." Does this apply to H. G. Wells? Dr.
The palaeontologist, that detective of the rocks, works up his case with the same thoroughness and caution and the same power of observation as does the detective in human affairs and with a greater sweep of scientific imagination. An agent of evolution is the influence of the environment, but who sees the environment set its stamp upon animal life?
From a bit of strata here, and a bit there, he re-creates the earth as it was in successive geologic periods, as Cuvier reconstructed his extinct animals from fragments of their bones; and the same interpretative power of the imagination is called into play in both cases, only the palaeontologist has a much narrower field to work in, and the background of his re-creations must be supplied by the geologist.
If we allow, with Pictet, that Darwin's theory will very well serve for all that concerns the present epoch of the world's history, an epoch which this renowned palaeontologist regards as including the diluvial or quaternary period, then Darwin's first and foremost need in his onward course is a practicable road from this into and through the tertiary period, the intervening region between the comparatively near and the far remote past.
Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source whence help will come. In commencing these remarks, mention was made of the great obligations under which the naturalist lies to the geologist and palaeontologist.
Devillario was a magistrate, a collector and palaeontologist; his simple tastes, his wide culture, and his passion for natural history would surely have decided Fabre to accept his invitations, but that he forbade himself the pleasure. As for me, it is very doubtful whether the temptation will seize me to come to Carpentras.
That he was a man of extraordinary endowments and deep spiritual nature was not questioned, nor that he was a most acute reasoner, who could unfold a proposition into its consequences as patiently, as convincingly, as a palaeontologist extorts its confession from a fossil fragment.
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