Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The excavation of the Roman town of Calleva Attrebatum at
Silchester, near Reading, England, has brought to light
nearly forty complete houses, a private bathing
establishment, two square temples, the west gate, a
Christian church possibly of the fourth century, a basilica
and forum, an extensive system of dye works, a series of
drains, other works, and a multitude of ornaments and
utensils--remains of Roman civic life and institutions,
complementing previous discoveries of Roman monuments in
England, which have been mostly military.
SKETCH OF GABRIEL DE MORTILLET.
"The École d'Anthropologie feels with a profound emotion the loss of
the eminent master, one of its glories, whose labors have contributed
in so large a measure to honor and magnify it, and to extend and
confirm its legitimate authority, and who had the exceedingly rare
merit of constituting a science which by means of him has become a
French science--that of prehistoric archæology." Such is the eminently
fitting tribute spoken by the professors of the Paris École
d'Anthropologie through their _Revue Mensuelle_ to the memory of
Gabriel de Mortillet.
LOUIS LAURENT GABRIEL DE MORTILLET was born at Meylan, Isère, France,
August 29, 1821, and died September 25, 1898. He began his studies
with the Jesuits at Chambéry, and continued them in Paris at the
Museum of Natural History and at the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers. He was interested in the revolutionary movements of 1848; and
in the insurrectionary demonstration of the 13th of June, 1849, which
followed the presentation by Ledru Rollin, on the 11th, of a
resolution of impeachment against President Louis Napoleon for
repressing the republican movement in Rome, it was with his help that
the eminent deputy was enabled to escape arrest. In the same year he
was condemned for a press offense and took refuge in Savoy. During his
exile he classified the collections of the Natural History Museum in
Geneva; had charge of the arrangement of the Museum at Annecy in 1854;
directed an exploitation of hydraulic lime in Italy; and served as
geological adviser in the construction of the northern railways of
that country. He was also associated with Agassiz in his studies of
the glaciers of Switzerland. He returned to Paris in 1864, and in 1867
was charged with the organization of the first hall or prehistoric
department of the History of Labor at the Universal Exposition of
1867. In 1868 he was called to the Museum of National Antiquities at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he continued till 1885. It is specially
mentioned that he carried this institution safely through the perils
of the war of 1870-'71. While engaged in these museum tasks he was
struck with the insufficiency of the then universally accepted
paleontological and prehistoric classifications, and his attention
became fully absorbed in the subject. He held long consultations with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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