Contents
Preface
I. Episodes in the Birth of Paleontology: The Nature of Fossils and the Histor y of the Earth
l. The Lying Stones of Marrakech
2. The Sharp-Eyed Lynx, Outfoxed by Nature
3. How the Vulva Stone Became a Brachiopod
II. Present at the Creation: How France’s Three Finest Scientists Established Natural History in an Age of Revolution
4. Inventing Natural History in Style
5. The Proof of Lavoisier’s Plates
6. A Tree Grows in Paris: Lamarck’s Division of Wormsand Revision of Nature
III. Darwin's Century-and Ours: Lessons from Britain’s Four Greatest Victorian Naturalists
7. Lyell’s Pillars of Wisdom
8. A Sly Dullard Named Darwin: Recognizing the Multiple Facets of Genius
9. An Awful Terrible Dinosaurian Irony
10. Second-Guessing the Future
IV. Six Little Pieces on the Meaning and Location of Excellence
Substrate and Accomplishment
11. Drink Deep, or Taste Not the Pierian Spring
12. Requiem Eternal
13. More Power to Him
De Mortuis When Truly Bonum
14. Bright Star Among Billions
15. The Glory of His Time and Ours
16. This Was a Man
V. Science in Society
17. A Tale of Two Work Sites
18. The Internal Brand of the Scarlet W
19. Dolly’s Fashion and Louis’s Passion
20. Above All, Do No Harm
VI. Evolution at all Scales
21. Of Embryos and Ancestors
22. The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant
23. Room of One’s Own
Illustration Credits
Index