In 1798 Geoffroy was chosen a member of the great scientific expedition to Egypt, and on the capitulation of Alexandria in August 1801, he took part in resisting the claim made by the British general to the collections of the expedition, declaring that, were that demand persisted in, history would have to record that he also had burnt a library in Alexandria. Early in January 1802 Geoffroy returned to his accustomed labours in Paris. He was elected a member of the academy of sciences of that city in September 1807. In March of the following year the emperor, who had already recognized his national services by the award of the cross of the legion of honour, selected him to visit the museums of Portugal, for the purpose of procuring collections from them, and in the face of considerable opposition from the British he eventually was successful in retaining them as a permanent possession for his country. In 1809, the year after his return to France, he was made professor of zoology at the faculty of sciences at Paris, and from that period he devoted himself more exclusively than before to anatomical study. In 1818 he gave to the world the first part of his celebrated Philosophie anatomique, the second volume of which, published in 1822, and subsequent memoirs account for the formation of monstrosities on the principle of arrest of development, and of the attraction of similar parts. When, in 1830, Geoffroy proceeded to apply to the invertebrata his views as to the unity of animal composition, he found a vigorous opponent in Georges Cuvier, and the discussion between them, continued up to the time of the death of the latter, soon attracted the attention of the scientific throughout Europe. Geoffroy, a synthesist, contended, in accordance with his theory of unity of plan in organic composition, that all animals are formed of the same elements, in the same number, and with the same connexions: homologous parts, however they differ in form and size, must remain associated in the same invariable order. With Goethe he held that there is in nature a law of compensation or balancing of growth, so that if one organ take on an excess of development, it is at the expense of some other part; and he maintained that, since nature takes no sudden leaps, even organs which are superfluous in any given species, if they have played an important part in other species of the same family, are retained as rudiments, which testify to the permanence of the general plan of creation. It was his conviction that, owing to the conditions of life, the same forms had not been perpetuated since the origin of all things, although it was not his belief that existing species are becoming modified. Cuvier, who was an analytical observer of facts, admitted only the prevalence of “laws of co-existence” or “harmony” in animal organs, and maintained the absolute invariability of species, which he declared had been created with a regard to the circumstances in which they were placed, each organ contrived with a view to the function it had to fulfil, thus putting, in Geoffroy’s considerations, the effect for the cause.
In July 1840 Geoffroy became blind, and some months later he had a paralytic attack. From that time his strength gradually failed him. He resigned his chair at the museum in 1841, and died at Paris on the 19th of June 1844.
Geoffroy wrote: Catalogue des mammifères du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (1813), not quite completed; Philosophie anatomique—t. i., Des organes respiratoires (1818), and t. ii., Des monstruosités humaines (1822); Système dentaire des mammifères et des oiseaux (1st pt., 1824); Sur le principe de l’unité de composition organique (1828); Cours de l’histoire naturelle des mammifères (1829); Principes de philosophie zoologique (1830); Études progressives d’un naturaliste (1835); Fragments biographiques (1832); Notions synthétiques, historiques et physiologiques de philosophie naturelle (1838), and other works; also part of the Description de l’Égypte par la commission des sciences (1821–1830); and, with Frédéric Cuvier (1773–1838), a younger brother of G. Cuvier, Histoire naturelle des mammifères (4 vols., 1820–1842); besides numerous papers on such subjects as the anatomy of marsupials, ruminants and electrical fishes, the vertebrate theory of the skull, the opercula of fishes, teratology, palaeontology and the influence of surrounding conditions in modifying animal forms.
See Vie, travaux, et doctrine scientifique d’Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, par son fils M. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Paris and Strasburg, 1847), to which is appended a list of Geoffroy’s works; and Joly, in Biog. universelle, t. xvi. (1856).
GEOFFROY SAINT-HILAIRE, ISIDORE (1805–1861), French
zoologist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris on the 16th of
December 1805. In his earlier years he showed an aptitude for
mathematics, but eventually he devoted himself to the study
of natural history and of medicine, and in 1824 he was appointed
assistant naturalist to his father. On the occasion of his taking
the degree of doctor of medicine in September 1829, he read a
thesis entitled Propositions sur la monstruosité, considérée chez
l’homme et les animaux; and in 1832–1837 was published his
great teratological work, Histoire générale et particulière des
anomalies de l’organisation chez l’homme et les animaux, 3 vols.
8vo. with 20 plates. In 1829 he delivered for his father the second
part of a course of lectures on ornithology, and during the three
following years he taught zoology at the Athénée, and teratology
at the École pratique. He was elected a member of the academy
of sciences at Paris in 1833, was in 1837 appointed to act as
deputy for his father at the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in
the following year was sent to Bordeaux to organize a similar
faculty there. He became successively inspector of the academy
of Paris (1840), professor of the museum on the retirement of
his father (1841), inspector-general of the university (1844),
a member of the royal council for public instruction (1845), and
on the death of H. M. D. de Blainville, professor of zoology
at the faculty of sciences (1850). In 1854 he founded the
Acclimatization Society of Paris, of which he was president.
He died at Paris on the 10th of November 1861.
Besides the above-mentioned works, he wrote: Essais de zoologie générale (1841); Vie . . . d’Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1847); Acclimatation et domestication des animaux utiles (1849; 4th ed., 1861); Lettres sur les substances alimentaires et particulièrement sur la viande de cheval (1856); and Histoire naturelle générale des règnes organiques (3 vols., 1854–1862), which was not quite completed. He was the author also of various papers on zoology, comparative anatomy and palaeontology.
GEOGRAPHY (Gr. γῆ, earth, and γράφειν, to write), the exact and organized knowledge of the distribution of phenomena
on the surface of the earth. The fundamental basis of geography
is the vertical relief of the earth’s crust, which controls all
mobile distributions. The grander features of the relief of the
lithosphere or stony crust of the earth control the distribution
of the hydrosphere or collected waters which gather into the
hollows, filling them up to a height corresponding to the volume,
and thus producing the important practical division of the
surface into land and water. The distribution of the mass of
the atmosphere over the surface of the earth is also controlled
by the relief of the crust, its greater or lesser density at the surface
corresponding to the lesser or greater elevation of the surface.
The simplicity of the zonal distribution of solar energy on the
earth’s surface, which would characterize a uniform globe, is
entirely destroyed by the dissimilar action of land and water
with regard to radiant heat, and by the influence of crust-forms
on the direction of the resulting circulation. The influence of
physical environment becomes clearer and stronger when the
distribution of plant and animal life is considered, and if it is
less distinct in the case of man, the reason is found in the modifications
of environment consciously produced by human effort.
Geography is a synthetic science, dependent for the data with
which it deals on the results of specialized sciences such as
astronomy, geology, oceanography, meteorology, biology and
anthropology, as well as on topographical description. The
physical and natural sciences are concerned in geography only
so far as they deal with the forms of the earth’s surface, or as
regards the distribution of phenomena. The distinctive task of
geography as a science is to investigate the control exercised by
the crust-forms directly or indirectly upon the various mobile
distributions. This gives to it unity and definiteness, and renders
superfluous the attempts that have been made from time to
time to define the limits which divide geography from geology
on the one hand and from history on the other. It is essential
to classify the subject-matter of geography in such a manner as
to give prominence not only to facts, but to their mutual relations
and their natural and inevitable order.
The fundamental conception of geography is form, including
