ivj OF EVOLUTION 31 



were almost unknown on the continent, owing to the 

 isolation of Great Britain during the war ; and he 

 even suggests that the popularity of Playfair in this 

 country may have not improbably led to the neglect 

 of the original work of Button 27 . 



On the continent, indeed, the authority of Cuvier 

 was supreme, and in his Essay on the Theory of the 

 Earth, prefixed to his Opus magnum the Ossemens 

 Fossiles the great naturalist threw the whole weight 

 of his influence into the scale of Catastrophism. He 

 maintained that a series of tremendous cataclysms 

 had affected the globe the last being the Noachian 

 deluge and that the floods of water that overspread 

 the earth, during each of these events, had buried 

 the various groups of animals, now extinct, that had 

 been successively created. 



If anything had been wanted in England to sup- 

 port and confirm the views that were then supposed 

 to be the only ones in harmony with the Scriptures, 

 it was found in the great authority of Cuvier. As 

 Zittel justly says, Cuvier's theory of 'World-Cata- 

 strophies ' ' which afforded a certain scientific basis 

 fortheMosaic account of the "Flood," was received with 

 special cordiality in England, for there, more than in 

 any other country, theological doctrines had always 

 affected geological conceptions **.' Britain, which had 

 produced the great philosopher, Hut ton, had now 



