Between 1857 and 1861 appeared Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_, in which the influence of environment on mankind is strongly emphasised. “To one of these four classes (Climate, Food, Soil, and the General Aspect of Nature) may be referred all the external phenomena by which Man has been permanently affected.”[129] The recognition of the environmental influence has long been a characteristic of the French school. Ripley (1900, p. 4) points out that, wherever the choice lies between heredity and environment, the French almost always prefer the latter as the explanation of the phenomenon. This is seen from the time of Bodin (1530-1596) and Montesquieu (1689-1755), with their objective explanations of philosophy, and Cuvier, who traced the close relationship between philosophy and geological formation, to Turquan (1896), who mapped out the awards made by the Paris Salon, showing the coincidence of the birth-place of the artists with the fertile river basins. Footnote 129: _L.c._, chap. ii. [Sidenote: =Ratzel. Reclus.=] In Germany the exponents of these theories were Cotta and Kohl, and later Peschel, Kirchhoff, Bastian, and Gerland; but the greatest name of all is that of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who has written the standard work on _Anthropo-Geographie_ (1882-91). Another monumental work is that by Élisée Reclus (1820-1905), _Nouvelle Géographie Universelle_ (1879-1894). [Sidenote: =Le Play.=] A great stimulus to the development of ethnological sociology was given by the school of Le Play in France, the concrete application of whose theories was worked out by Demolins and others, and published in _La Science Sociale_ and separate works. It is the essential procedure of the followers of this school, in their studies in descriptive sociology, to begin with the environment, and to trace its effects upon the occupation of the people, their sociology, and so forth. The method is an extremely suggestive one, and has led to many brilliant generalisations. The danger consists in theorising from imperfect data, and there is a tendency to attribute certain social conditions directly to the influences of environment and occupation, where a wider knowledge of ethnology would show that these or analogous social conditions obtained in other places where they were not produced by the causes suggested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _RETROSPECT_ ON taking a brief final survey of the history of anthropology, one is struck by the fact that, owing to the tendency of students to limit their attention to one of the varied subjects which are grouped under the term Anthropology, the progress of the science has been very irregular.