"Never shall I forget," says Agassiz, "the impression which the sight of
the _Pterichthys_, provided with appendages resembling wings, produced
upon me, when I assured myself that it belonged to the class of fishes.
It was an entirely new type, which was about to figure, for the first
time since it had ceased to exist, in the series of beings--again to
form a link which nothing of all that had been revealed up to the time
with regard to extinct creations, would have led us ever to suspect the
existence of--showing forcibly that observation alone can lead us to the
recognition of the laws of development of organized beings; and how much
we should guard against all those systems of transformation of species,
which the imagination invents with as much facility as reason refutes
them."
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"SHEPHERD TO THE KING OF ENGLAND FOR SCOTLAND."
Lalande, the celebrated astronomer, committed a ludicrous mistake in
styling James Ferguson, _Berger du Roi d'Angleterre en Ecosse_, the King
of England's Shepherd for Scotland. The matter has, however, been thus
explained:--Daubenton, as a naturalist, had the charge of the royal
flocks of sheep in France. In order to retain his situation under the
republic, he required a _certificate of civism_ from the Section of the
Sans Culottes. In this curious document, he is called _the Shepherd
Daubenton_. Lalande, whose great work on astronomy was published at this
period, had seen James Ferguson (the astronomer) designated _the
Shepherd_, probably to distinguish him from Adam Ferguson the
Philosopher, and hence he placed _Ferguson the Shepherd_ in the same
category with _the Shepherd Daubenton_, and made him "Shepherd to the
King of England for Scotland!"
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