The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology, by
Thomas Henry Huxley

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Title: The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2628]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by D. R. Thompson

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