68 WHAT EVOLUTION IS 



sider the possibilities of a process 

 which, if it occurred at all, was almost 

 inconceivably slow. Although Cuvier 

 has since been shown to be wrong in 

 his general deductions, the results of 

 such speculations as this led trans- 

 formists in the early days to assume a 

 very long period for the evolution of 

 life on the earth, a conception quite in 

 line with the growing uniformitarian 

 geology of the day. The assumption 

 of a relatively great age for the earth 

 and its inhabitants has been entirely 

 justified by subsequent scientific in- 

 quiry, but in the days of Cuvier and 

 Lamarck and even in the time of Dar- 

 win it was based on much less con- 

 vincing evidence than at present. 

 To-day it is beyond dispute that the 

 age of the earth as the abode of life is 

 to be reckoned in hundreds if not 

 thousands of millions of years. 



In consequence of these growing 



