Cataclysms with Supplementary Creations 283 



finding in the facts of nature an explanation of how things 

 came to be as they are. Because of the absence of detailed 

 observations, the idea of the transmutation of species was 

 at the best a plausible inference; or it was a foregone con- 

 clusion on philosophical grounds. 



Cataclysms with Supplementary Creations 



During the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century 

 there was no man living who was better informed than 

 Cuvier regarding the structure of various types of animals, 

 both living and dead. No one was better informed regard- 

 ing the actual succession of animals in past ages. Cuvier saw 

 clearly enough that the earth had been inhabited in past 

 times by forms that no longer existed. From the fossil 

 remains of crocodiles and elephants, of hippopotamuses, 

 and rhinoceroses, and of other reptiles and mammals 

 that abounded in the jungles and swamps which at one 

 time occupied the region that is now Paris, Cuvier read 

 the story with remarkable precision. To him it was per- 

 fectly clear that there had been through the ages " an 

 upward development in the animal forms inhabiting the 

 globe." 



But this did not mean to Cuvier the steady transmuta- 

 tion of species. What he saw was long periods in which the 

 flora and fauna remained immutable, alternating with rela- 

 tively brief periods of violent and unthinkable cataclysms 

 that swept everything away. After each cataclysm a new 

 creation repeopled the earth with higher forms of plants 

 and animals, modeled, however, on the traditional types. 

 In this way, thought Cuvier, it came about that the living 

 beings of our time are different from those of the past. In 

 this way it came about that successive ages presented more 

 developed forms. The theory of periodic cataclysms, of 

 which the Biblical flood was the latest, though probably not 

 the last, was satisfactory on philosophical grounds. For it 

 did not inquire too curiously into the mechanisms or the 



