AGASSIZ ON CEEATION. 6 1 



theory of cataclysms, and pointed to a perfectly continuous 

 and uninterrupted developmental history of all the organic 

 inhabitants of the earth through all ages. They maintained 

 that the animal and vegetable species of each period were 

 derived from those of the preceding period, and were only 

 the altered descendants of the former. This true conception, 

 however, being opposed to Cuvier's great authority, was 

 then unable to make way. Nay, even after Cuvier's theory 

 of catastrophies had been completely cast out from the 

 domain of geology by Lyell's classic Principles of Geology, 

 which appeared in 1830, still his idea of the specific dis- 

 tinctness of a series of organic creations maintained its 

 influence, in many ways, in the science of Palaeontology. 

 (Gen. Morph. ii. 312.) 



By a curious coincidence, thirteen years ago, almost at 

 the same time that Cuvier's History of Creation received its 

 death-blow by Darwin's book, another celebrated naturalist 

 made an attempt to re-establish it, and to adopt it in the 

 roughest manner, as a part of a teleologico-theological 

 system of nature. This was the Swiss geologist, Louis 

 Agassiz, who attained a great reputation by his theory 

 of glaciers and the ice-period, borrowed from Schimper and 

 Charpentier, and who has been living in North America for 

 many years. He commenced in 1858 to publish a work 

 planned on a very large scale, which bears the title of 

 " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States 

 of North America." The first volume of this work, although 

 large and costly, owing to the patriotism of the Americans, 

 had an unprecedented sale ; its title is, " An Essay on Classi- 

 fication." ^ 



In this essay Agassiz not only discusses the natural series 



