Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/566

548 "In all these important positions," says Dr. Capitan in his eulogy, "de Mortillet unfailingly brought a uniform ardor to his work, a uniform activity, a clear and acute wit, and a remarkable precision. He performed his numerous duties almost to the end of his life. Only last month (July, 1898) he made another journey for the execution of a mission which the commission on megalithic monuments had intrusted to him."

In connection with these multifarious labors, M. de Mortillet published a considerable number of memoirs and of books of the highest order. He was a transformist from the very first, and performed all his various researches in the spirit of an evolutionist. His first publications were on conchology, and numerous memoirs between 1851 and 1862 related to subjects in that branch. During the same period he contributed many important works on the geology and mineralogy of Savoy. Among these were the History of the Land and Fresh-water Mollusks of Savoy and the Basin of Lake Leman, and a Guide to the Traveler in Savoy. His attention was afterward more entirely directed to prehistoric archaeology and anthropology, and he published in 1866 a curious Study on the Sign of the Cross previous to Christianity. Of this period, too, are his Promenades, or Walks, in the Universal Exposition of 1867, and his Walks in the Museum of Saint-Germain, 1869. He founded, in 1864, the Recueil, or Collection of Materials for the Positive History of Man, which was afterward continued at Toulouse by M. E. Cartailhac. In 1879 he published a work on pottery marks—Potiérs allobroges, ou les Sigles figulins étudiés par les Méthodes de l'Histoire naturelle. In 1881, in co-operation with his son, Adrien de Mortillet, as artist, he published a magnificent illustrated work or album, Le Muséee Préhistorique (The Prehistoric Museum); and in 1883, the volume Le Préhistorique (Prehistoric Archæology); two books which have taken rank as master works. A second edition of the Préhistorique appeared in 1885, and at the time of his death he was preparing a third, in which he was taking great pains to bring the matter up to the present condition of the science. Another important work was the Origines de la Chasse et de la Pêche (Origin of Hunting and Fishing). A considerable number of memoirs by M. de Mortillet appeared in various scientific journals, especially in the two founded by him—Les Matéeriaux pour l'Histoire primitive et naturelle de l'Homme, already mentioned, and L'Homme, which was established in 1884.

An epoch in M. de Mortillet's life was marked in 1873, when a discussion took place at the Anthropological Congress, in Lyons, between him and M. Abel Hovelacque concerning the precursors of man. The researches of the two masters had already led them, by a