FOSSIL PEDIGREES 103 



appearance, and classifies strata according to their fossil, 

 rather than their mineral, contents, but he stands committed 

 to the same old postulate of universal deposits. He has no hesi- 

 tation in synchronizing such widely-scattered formations as 

 the Devonian deposits of New York State, England, Germany, 

 and South America. He pieces them all together as parts of 

 a single system of rocks. He has no misgiving as to the uni- 

 versal applicability of the European scheme of stratigraphic 

 classification, but assures us, in the words of the geologist, 

 Wm. B. Scott, that: ''Even the minuter divisions, the sub- 

 divisions and zones of the European Jura, are applicable to 

 the classification of the South American beds." ("Introduc- 

 tion to Geology," p. 681f.) The limestone and sandstone 

 strata of Werner are now things of the past, but, in their 

 stead, we have, to quote the criticism of Herbert Spencer, 

 "groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other 

 in a given order, and are severally everywhere of the same 

 age. Though it may not be asserted that these successive 

 systems are universal, yet it seems to be tacitly assumed that 

 they are so. . . . Though probably no competent geologist 

 would contend that the European classification of strata is 

 applicable to the globe as a whole, yet most, if not all geol- 

 ogists, write as though it were so. . . . Must we not say 

 that though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is 

 traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclu- 

 sions of its antagonists." ("Illustrations of Universal Prog- 

 ress," pp. 329-380, ed. of 1890.) 



But overlooking, for the moment, the mechanical absurdity 

 involved in the notion of a regular succession of universal 

 layers of sediment, and conceding, for the sake of argument, 

 that the substitution of fossiliferous, for lithological, strata 

 may conceivably have remedied the defects of Werner's geol- 

 ogical time-scale, let us confine ourselves to the one question, 

 which, after all, is of prime importance, whether, namely, 

 without the aid of Procrustean tactics, the actual facts of 

 geology can be brought into alignment with the doctrine of 



