lations were received in silence and not deemed worthy of
discussion.

A very just and discriminating judge of Lamarck's work, Professor
Cleland, thus refers to his writings on physics and chemistry:

"The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be admitted, quite apart
from all consideration of the famous hypothesis which bears his
name, to have been want of control in speculation. Doubtless the
speculative tendency furnished a powerful incentive to work, but it
outran the legitimate deductions from observation, and led him into
the production of volumes of worthless chemistry without
experimental basis, as well as into spending much time in fruitless
meteorological predictions." (_Encyc. Brit._, Art. LAMARCK.)

How a modern physicist regards Lamarck's views on physics may be seen by
the following statement kindly written for this book by Professor Carl
Barus of Brown University, Providence:

"Lamarck's physical and chemical speculations, made throughout on
the basis of the alchemistic philosophy of the time, will have
little further interest to-day than as evidence showing the broadly
philosophic tendencies of Lamarck's mind. Made without experiment
and without mathematics, the contents of the three volumes will
hardly repay perusal, except by the historian interested in certain
aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science. The temerity with which
physical phenomena are referred to occult static molecules,
permeated by subtle fluids, the whole mechanism left without dynamic
quality, since the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is
markedly in contrast with the discredit into which such hypotheses
have now fallen. It is true that an explanation of natural phenomena
in terms "le feu ethere, le feu calorique, et le feu fixe" might be
interpreted with reference to the modern doctrine of energy; but it
is certain that Lamarck, antedating Fresnel, Carnot, Ampere, not to
mention their great followers, had not the faintest inkling of the
possibility of such an interpretation. Indeed, one may readily
account for the resemblance to modern views, seeing that all
speculative systems of science must to some extent run in parallel,
inasmuch as they begin with the facts of common experience. Nor were
his speculations in any degree stimulating to theoretical science.
Many of his mechanisms in which the ether operates on a plane of
equality with the air can only be regard