EVIDENCE OF FOSSIL REMAINS 79 



and surely, emphasizing particularly the necessity for 

 noting carefully the geological situation of a fossil in 

 rocks of an older or later period of formation. His 

 great result was the demonstration that many groups 

 of animals existed in earlier ages that seem to have no 

 descendants of the same nature to-day, and also that 

 many or most of our modern groups are not represented 

 in the earliest formed sedimentary rocks, although these 

 recent forms possess hard parts which would surely be 

 present somewhere in these levels if the animals actually 

 existed in those times. But the meaning of these 

 facts escaped Cuvier's mind. He was a behever in 

 special creation, Hke Linnaeus and all but a few among 

 his predecessors, and he explained the diversity of 

 the faunas of different geological times in what seems 

 to us a very simple and naive way. In the beginning, 

 he held, when the world was created, it was furnished 

 with a complete set of animals and plants. Then some 

 great upheaval of nature occurred which overwhelmed 

 and destroyed all living creatures. The Creator then, 

 in Cuvier's view, proceeded to construct a new series of 

 animals and plants, which were not identical with those 

 of the former time, but were created according to the 

 same general working plans or architectural schemes 

 employed before. Another cataclysm was supposed 

 to have occurred, which destroyed the second series of 

 organisms and laid a new covering of rocks over the 

 earth's surface for a subsequent period of relative quiet ; 

 and so the process was continued. By this account, 

 Cuvier endeavored to reconcile the doctrine of super- 

 natural creation and intervention with the obvious 

 facts that organisms have differed at various times in 



