Excerpt from Geological Magazine, 1878, Vol. 5
Since its foundation as a Science, at the beginning of this century, by the illustrious Cuvier, Pal?ontology has progressed with an astonishing rapidity; and though theoretically belonging to the twin sciences of Zoology and Botany, its domain is now so vast, and the number of facts which it has accumulated is so great, that it has every claim to rank as a distinct department of knowledge, which cannot be fully mastered except by those who make it the subject of special study. That the number of these is daily increasing is shown conclusively by the increased number of systematic works on Pal?ontology which have appeared of late years, and not less by the character of these. Two of these treatises, both as yet but partially published, may be singled out for mention in this connexion - namely, the "Handbuch der Pal?ontologie" by Professors Zittel and Schimper, and the new "Leth?a Geognostica" by an association of German pal?ontologists. The former of these, if carried out with the fulness and accuracy which distinguish its first portion, will be one of the most valuable and important treatises on systematic pal?ontology which we possess in any language, and will be a fitting companion to the classical treatises of Pictet and D"Orbigny, though it will not supersede either of these honoured works. Of the second of these only the first part, embracing the Atlas of Plates of Pal?ozoic fossils, has as yet been issued; but if the text be equal to the plates, and if the various sections of the work are undertaken by men as eminent as Ferdinand Roemer, the new "Leth?a Geognostica" will undoubtedly form an indispensable item in the library of every working pal?ontologist.
If it be the Germans whom the student has to thank for these new systematic treatises, it is to the English-speaking races that we owe the latest attempts to reduce the present chaotic condition of pal?ontology to order, by establishing a bibliography of the science, and by the preparation of catalogues of the fossils of particular formations or of particular countries. In carrying out the first of these ends, the successful foundation of the "Geological Record" must be regarded as a great step in advance.
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