384 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Genesis, and second, that the present features of the earth are to 

 be explained chiefly by the more recent Flood of Noah described 

 in the seventh chapter. 



Before geology had attained to the position of an inductive science, 

 it was customary to begin all investigations into the history of the 

 earth by propounding or adopting some more or less fanciful hypothe- 

 sis in explanation of the origin of our planet, or even of the uni- 

 verse. . . . To the illustrious James Hutton (1785) geologists are 

 indebted for strenuously upholding the doctrine that it is no part of 

 the province of geology to discuss the origin of things. He taught 

 them that in the materials from which geological evidence is to be 

 compiled there can be found ' no traces of a beginning, no prospect of 

 an end.' Geikie. 



The vast deposits of sand, gravel and clay, with the embedded 

 remains of contemporaneous animal and vegetable life with which 

 they (glacial torrents) everywhere covered the plains, were viewed 

 till recently solely in relation to the Mosaic narrative of a universal 

 deluge, and were referred implicitly to that source. Wilson. 



As late as 1823 Buckland, a distinguished English geologist, 

 published a work on extinct animals from a Yorkshire cavern 

 entitled Reliquce Diluwanas. As for plants and animals, the almost 

 universal opinion was that these, like the earth, had been specially 

 created and had remained ever since substantially unchanged. 



As for the crust of the earth, composed, as this is often seen to 

 be in section, of unlike layers, it was a long time before the current 

 idea of sudden creation could be replaced by one so different as 

 that of slow and steady deposition. This change, however, was 

 finally though only gradually effected, largely through actual 

 observation and measurement of the slow deposits of rivers, and 

 other geological phenomena of to-day, combined with Lyell's 

 thesis that those of the past were essentially similar. The time 

 element, in brief, began to be recognized as a new and an important 

 factor in the making of the earth's crust. 



Reference has been made above to Lyell's revolutionary trea- 

 tise, The Principles of Geology, published in 1830. This great 

 work which adopted, emphasized, and extended the works of 



