A distinguished modern writer has with truth remarked, that the advancement of three of the main divisions of geological inquiry have during the last half century been promoted successively by three different nations of Europe,--the Germans, the English, and the French.[120] We have seen that the systematic study of what may be called mineralogical geology had its origin and chief point of activity in Germany, where Werner first described with precision the mineral characters of rocks. The classification of the secondary formations, each marked by their peculiar fossils, belongs, in a great measure, to England, where the labors before alluded to of Smith, and those of the most active members of the Geological Society of London, were steadily directed to these objects. The foundation of the third branch, that relating to the tertiary formations, was laid in France by the splendid work of Cuvier and Brongniart, published in 1808, "On the Mineral Geography and Organic Remains of the Neighborhood of Paris."
We may still trace, in the language of the science and our present methods of arrangement, the various countries where the growth of these several departments of geology was at different times promoted. Many names of simple minerals and rocks remain to this day German; while the European divisions of the secondary strata are in great part English, and are, indeed, often founded too exclusively on English types. Lastly, the subdivisions first established of the succession of strata in the Paris basin have served as normal groups to which other tertiary deposits throughout Europe have been compared, even in cases where this standard was wholly inapplicable.
No period could have been more fortunate for the discovery, in the immediate neighborhood of Paris, of a rich store of well-preserved fossils, than the commencement of the present century; for at no former era had Natural history been cultivated with such enthusiasm in the French metropolis. The labors of Cuvier in comparative osteology, and of Lamarck in recent and fossil shells, had raised these departments of study to a rank of which they had never previously been deemed susceptible. Their investigations had eventually a powerful effect in dispelling the illusion which had long prevailed concerning the absence of analogy between the ancient and modern state of our planet. A close comparison of the recent and fossil species and the inferences drawn in regard to their habits, accustomed the geologist to contemplate the earth as having been at successive periods the dwelling-place of animals and plants of different races, some terrestrial, and others aquatic--some fitted to live in seas, others in the waters of lakes and rivers. By the consideration of these topics, the mind was slowly and insensibly withdrawn from imaginary pictures of catastrophes and chaotic confusion, such as haunted the imagination of the early cosmogonists. Numerous proofs were discovered of the tranquil deposition of sedimentary matter, and the slow development of organic life. If many writers, and Cuvier himself in the number, still continued to maintain, that "the thread of induction was broken,"[121] yet, in reasoning by the strict rules of induction from recent to fossil species, they in a great measure disclaimed the dogma which in theory they professed. The adoption of the same generic, and, in some cases, even of the same specific, names for the exuviæ of fossil animals and their living analogues, was an important step towards familiarizing the mind with the idea of the identity and unity of the system in distant eras. It was an acknowledgment, as it were, that part at least of the ancient memorials of nature were written in a living language. The growing importance, then, of the natural history of organic remains may be pointed out as the characteristic feature of the progress of the science during the present century. This branch of knowledge has already become an instrument of great utility in geological classification, and is continuing daily to unfold new data for grand and enlarged views respecting the former changes of the earth.