"Palaeontology" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparent," Cuvier writes, "that the bones of quadrupeds conduct us, by various reasonings, to more precise results than any other relics of organised bodies." The two books together may be considered the first really scientific palaeontology. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... sciences of Geology and Palaeontology are making such rapid progress, now that they go hand in hand, that our familiarity with past creations is daily increasing. We know already that extinct animals exist all over the world: heaped together under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... distinctly is not the case; for Science knows nothing whatsoever about the origin of man's body. In 1901 Branco, a distinguished palaeontologist, with no Theistic leanings as far as we know, told the world that man appears on our planet as "a genuine homo novus," and that palaeontology "knows no ancestors of man." Nor has any discovery since that date necessitated the modification of that opinion. What the writer means by saying "We know" is "I am convinced"; but, with the deepest respect for his undoubted position, the two things are not quite ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the wild herbage of his native savannas—is at all points ruthlessly invaded. But the result is inevitable—it will come to an end; and some future generation of naturalists—those of them at least who are curious in Palaeontology—will regard the remains of our contemporary races of elephants with the same kind of astonishment with which we investigate the pre-historic evidences of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... aeon of the whole species is utterly unknown. Amongst birds, one species at least has become extinct in our own generation: its aeon was accomplished. So of all the fossil species in zoology, which Palaeontology has revealed. Nothing, in short, throughout universal nature, can for a moment be conceived to have been resigned to accident for its normal aeon. All periods and dates of this order belong to the certainties of nature, but also, at ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... strain, and monotony. Reason is not come to repeat the universe but to fulfil it. Besides, a complete survey of events would perforce register all changes that have taken place in matter since time began, the fields of geology, astronomy, palaeontology, and archaeology being all, in a sense, included in history. Such learning would dissolve thought in a vertigo, if it had not already perished of boredom. Historical research is accordingly a servile science which may enter ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... solemn melancholy which oppresses and pursues me? I have just read a series of scientific books (Bronn on the "Laws of Palaeontology," Karl Ritter on the "Law of Geographical Forms"). Are they the cause of this depression? or is it the majesty of this immense landscape, the splendor of this setting sun, which brings the tears ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sequence of the geological formations, and distinguishing, with ever-increasing precision, the specific differences of the animals and plants contained in these accumulations of past ages. These results bear living testimony to the wonderful progress of the kindred sciences of Geology and Palaeontology in the last half-century; and the development-theory has but an insecure foundation so long as it attempts to strengthen itself by belittling the geological record, the assumed imperfection of which, in default of positive facts, has now become the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Palaeontological Institute of Berlin University, says, "Man appeared suddenly in the Quaternary period. Palaeontology tells us nothing on the subject,—it knows nothing of the ancestors ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... other hand, can it rightly be argued that because the history of these remains is not wholly to be recovered, therefore no inference from them is possible. In the earlier stages of a science like palaeontology it might have been argued in just the same way that the difficulties and confusion in the classification invalidated the science along with its one main inference altogether. Yet we can see that such an argument ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... doubt that, in the economy of Nature, bishops are an unnecessary organ, merely transmitted by inheritance in the national organism, and that in the course of time they will become atrophied and degenerate out of existence. When that time comes you must be content to pass into oblivion. Study Palaeontology.' Now he pronounced it Paleyon-tology, not having had a classical education. 'Think of the pterodactyles, who passed away before the end of the Mesozoic ages, and never have appeared again. What, in the eternal nature of things, are bishops ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... opinion, he boldly proved to have been a gigantic sloth. This was the first of those able comparisons of the fossil with the present world which revolutionized geology, extended comparative anatomy, and absolutely created the science of palaeontology. He was also appointed to a professorship of natural philosophy in the College of France; then he rose, step by step, under the favor and patronage of Napoleon, who made him an inspector-general of schools; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... of animals or plants may have arisen from another through a long continued process of natural selection. The result of such work on the whole may be said to have shown that the diverse forms under which living things exist to-day, and have existed in the past so far as palaeontology can tell us, are consistent with the view that they are all related by the community of descent which the accepted theory of evolution demands, though as to the exact course of descent for any particular group of animals there ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... it at this time; but if she finds out anything of interest she will tell me, if she does anybody. Perhaps she does not mean to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business,—a young girl studying the natural history of a young man. Not quite so safe as botany or palaeontology!" ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The physical description of the Canary Islands was published at Berlin in 1825, and this work alone is regarded as an enduring monument of his labours. After leaving the Canaries von Buch proceeded to the Hebrides and the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Palaeontology also claimed his attention, and he described in 1831 and later years a number of Cephalopods, Brachiopods and Cystidea, and pointed out their stratigraphical importance. In addition to the works already mentioned von ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... man himself. As to language, the ethnological method, left to itself, can find out nothing whatever. The science of the ethnologer then is primarily physical; it is historical only in that secondary sense in which palaeontology, and geology itself, may fairly be called historical. It arranges the varieties of mankind according to a strictly physical classification; what the language of each variety may have been, it leaves to the professors of another branch of study ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph |
