290 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



system at its base. Still, it is a fact that those pioneers of geological 

 science builded better than they knew, for they accomplished their work 

 at a time when the views of naturalists upon the vital principles of 

 biology were radically different from those which now prevail.* They, 

 therefore, misconceived the tine character of the basis of the scheme 

 upon which they constructed their scale, and yet their structure remains 

 without need of material change after a revolution in the methods of 

 thought upon the subjects to which its fundamental idea pertains, the 

 equal of which has never been known in the history of scientific inves- 

 tigation.! That is. the scale, notwithstanding their misconception of 

 its underlying principles, was constructed in accordance with certain 

 immutable facts which they used wisely in their structure but inter- 

 preted wrongly as to the relation to those principles of the facts which 

 they so clearly perceived. It is to their erroneous interpretation of 

 facts and the influence which that interpretation has had upon later 

 investigators that I now desire to call special attention. 



Although the scale now in use was established before the truth of 

 the progressive evolution of organic forms was accepted by naturalists 

 and when all differences between those forms was believed to be due 

 to special creations, general progression in average biological rank dur- 

 ing geological time was perceived by the early geologists as well as by 

 those of the present day, but with them it was the perception of a progres- 

 sive succession in rank of faunal and floral groups of great assemblages 

 of organic forms, and not the recognition of the principle of evolution. 

 Therefore they sought methods of explaining the facts and conditions 

 which they observed with reference to the geological scale which they 

 had established that should accord with the biological views which 

 then prevailed, and which were largely of a supernatural character. 

 Indeed, in the absence of the now prevalent natural method of explain- 

 ing these facts the supernatural method of the early geologists seems 

 to have been necessary. 



The following deductive propositions which now remind a naturalist 

 of the articles of a creed more than of a statement of scientific princi- 

 ples, are presented as indicating the fundamental ideas held by the 

 early geologists in connection with the construction of the geological 

 scale and as illustrating the state of prevalent opinion among leading 

 geologists upon biological subjects in their time. It is true that no one 



* It is tine that dicing those early years of geological investigation there were a 

 few advanced thinkers who held a belief in the progressive evolution of all organic 

 tonus, hut their views were then at best only tolerated by the great body of 

 naturalists. 



tThis revolution occurred about midway of the time that is discussed with refer- 

 ence to the two preceding tables— that is, about midway between 1840 and 1893. 

 The fact that this time embraces nearly the whole history of really scientific geolog- 

 ical investigation is suggestive of a hope that within less than a like number of 

 years all the inherited effects of the erroneous views of the pioneers upon biological 

 geology will have been eliminated. 



