Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/278

266 and, in closing, used these memorable words: 'The glory of Monsieur Pasteur is such that many envious teeth will be broken upon it. Our works and our names will long be buried under the inconstant tide of oblivion, when the name and the works of Pasteur will still be resplendent, and will shine upon such elevated heights that they will never be reached by that dismal flood.'

"Four months after the utterance of these enthusiastic and prophetic words. Prof. Vulpian was borne to the grave. The members of the Academy of Medicine, the Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine, and the numerous scientific societies of Paris, participated in the grand and imposing obsequies with which the world-renowned savant was honored, and delegates from these institutions pronounced well-merited eulogies over his tomb. The numerous writings from his pen with which medical literature has been enriched will long constitute the highest authority upon the subjects which he investigated."

Vulpian was elected to the Academy of Sciences in the Section of Medicine, when he took the place of Andral in 1876; in 1886 he was chosen perpetual secretary, to succeed M. Jamin. He was given the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1869, and was made an officer of that body in 1878. The collection of M. Vulpian's publications gives only an incomplete idea of his labors, which were divided between experimental research and teaching. These works include "Des Pneumonies Secondaires" ("Of Secondary Pneumonias," 1860); and "Leçons sur la Physiologic Générale et Comparée du Système Nerveux" ("Lessons on the General and Comparative Physiology of the Nervous System"). Before the short illness of which he died, he was giving lectures on the respiratory system, and he was about to publish an important book on the cerebral functions.

is now manifest, says Prof. Judd, that no classification of geological periods can possibly be of world-wide application; and that "we must be contented to study the past history of each great area of the earth's surface independently, and to wait patiently for the evidence which shall enable us to establish a parallelism between the several records." Moreover, while attention was once predominantly given to marine deposits, "the growth of our knowledge concerning the terrestrial floras and faunas of ancient geological periods. . . has constantly forced upon the minds of many geologists the necessity of a duplicate classification of geological periods, based on the study of marine and terrestrial organisms respectively." One of the greatest sources of danger to the progress of geological knowledge at the present day is the tendency to forget that the geological record, although of enormous value, is exceedingly imperfect, and thus to make too hasty generalizations on insufficient data.