Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/521

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
517
Map of the Antarctic Region,
Showing the expeditions of the Shackleton parties toward the south geographical pole and to the south magnetic pole.—From the Independent.

Peary's farthest north. They were then 111 miles from the south pole, and saw a great plain without mountains stretching towards the south at an altitude of 10,000 or 11,000 feet above sea level. One pony after another had been killed and eaten, and during the latter part of the trip the supply of food had been reduced to a minimum. The return was accomplished with great hardships, the headquarters being reached on March 4, after an absence of 126 days, during which the distance of 1,708 statute miles was covered. Coal measures were found in the limestone, and eight distinct mountain ranges with over 100 peaks were discovered.

TWO GREAT FRENCH NATURALISTS

In the deaths of Jean Albert Gaudry and Alfred Giard, France has lost two naturalists of distinction, whose contributions to our knowledge of organic evolution were important factors in the most notable scientific advance of the second half of the nineteenth century. They both had in common with their great leader, Charles Darwin, an accurate knowledge of facts in broad fields of the natural sciences and a deep interest in theories and philosophical generalization. They shared fully the quick perception, wide insight and clear expression which are characteristic of French genius.

Gaudry was born near Paris in 1827; as a boy he was interested in natural science and the collecting of fossils. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed assistant professor of paleontology in the Paris Museum of Natural History. Before and after the publication of "The Origin of Species" he was engaged in his researches on the late Tertiary vertebrate fauna at Pikermi, near Athens, and on Mont Leberon. His work on the evolution of horses, rhinoceroses and other animals of these regions is of fundamental and classic importance. Other researches