b. September 10, 1788 and d. August 10, 1868

French archæologist. He has been called the founder of the science of archaeo-geology. His reputation is founded chiefly on his work called “La Creation” (1839-1841) and his “Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities” (1847).

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable
sea,
Sway’d by vaster ebbs and flows that can be known to you or
me.
All the suns-are these but symbols of innumerable man.
Man or mind that sees a shadow of the planner in the plan?
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Many an Æon moulded earth before her highest man was
born,
Many an Æon, too, pass when earth is manless and
forlorn.

—Tennyson

1799—The famous Rosetta stone was discovered containing a decree of the Egyptian Priests in favor of Ptolemy V. (205-181 B. C.), being written in three languages, one of which was ancient Egyptian. It afforded the key by which hieroglyphics were deciphered.

1822—Jean Francois Champollion discovered the alphabetic characters of ancient Egyptian and read names of persons and places.

1856—Emmanuel de Rouge translated Egyptian text, including a poem describing the exploits of Rameses II. in his war with the Hittites.

b. September 10, 1822 and d. ?

American inventor. He was the first to manufacture the chemicals used in the daguerreotype process in this country. In connection with photography he made many useful inventions and improvements. He prepared his plates and brought out his pictures by steam, invented crayon daguerreotype and crystalotypes (daguerreotypes on glass), and on July 17, 1850, he photographed Alpha Lyra, which is said to have been the first successful experiment in stellar photography.

The wise and active conquer difficulties
By daring to attempt them; sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at the sight of toil and hazard,
And make the impossibilities they fear.

—Rowe

Each in its orbit through unmeasured space,
Sweeps round the central sun in tireless race.
Say, ye great orbs, have you your land and seas,
Your ever-flowing streams, your forest trees?
Have you your mountains high and valleys wide,
Where your peaceful denizens reside?
Have you true men, who know the wrong and right,
And, knowing, walk in truth, in love and light?

1839, June—An account of the invention by which images were fixed on a plate by gilding it was published. Daguerre, in 1834, discovered photography on paper; he made experiments on metal plates, and in 1833 discovered that a silver plate was made sensitive to light by exposing it to iodine vapors.

b. February 4, 1778 and d. September 9, 1841

Swiss botanist. In his “Elementary Theory of Botany” (1813) he developed a new classification of plants according to the natural system. He developed the doctrine of metamorphosis in his “Vegetable Organography” (1827). He occupied the highest rank among the botanists of the nineteenth century, and was a friend of Cuvier, Humboldt and Lamarck.

See him from nature rising slow to art!
To copy instinct there was reason’s part:
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake-
Go, from the creatures thy instruction take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physics of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave:
Learn of the little Nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.

—Essay on Man: Pope

Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the
splendor of meaning that plays over the visible
world knew that a tree had another use than for
apples, and corn another than for meal, and the
ball of the earth than for tillage and roads; that
these things bore a second and finer harvest to the
mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying
in all their natural history a certain mute
commentary on human life.

—Representative Men: Emerson