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    The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
    The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
    The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
    Ebook42 pages28 minutes

    The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology

    By Thomas Henry Huxley

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology

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      Book preview

      The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology - Thomas Henry Huxley

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology, by

      Thomas Henry Huxley

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology

             Essay #2 from Science and Hebrew Tradition

      Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

      Release Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2628]

      Last Updated: January 20, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROGRESS OF PALAEONTOLOGY ***

      Produced by D. R. Thompson, and David Widger

      THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF PALAEONTOLOGY

      THIS IS ESSAY #2 FROM SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION

      By Thomas Henry Huxley

      That application of the sciences of biology and geology, which is commonly known as palaeontology, took its origin in the mind of the first person who, finding something like a shell, or a bone, naturally imbedded in gravel or rock, indulged in speculations upon the nature of this thing which he had dug out—this fossil—and upon the causes which had brought it into such a position. In this rudimentary form, a high antiquity may safely be ascribed to palaeontology, inasmuch as we know that, 500 years before the Christian era, the philosophic doctrines of Xenophanes were influenced by his observations upon the fossil remains exposed in the quarries of Syracuse. From this time forth not only the philosophers, but the poets, the historians, the geographers of antiquity occasionally refer to fossils; and, after the revival of learning, lively controversies arose respecting their real nature. 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.

      But, although palaeontology is a comparatively youthful scientific speciality, the mass of materials with which it has to deal is already prodigious. In the last fifty years the number of known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has

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