WORK IN PALZONTOLOGY 149 
He then adds his proofs of the occurrence of rev- 
olutions before the existence of living beings. Like 
Lamarck, Cuvier was a Wernerian, and in speaking 
of the older or primitive crystalline rocks which con- 
tain no vestige of fossils, he accepted the view of the 
German theorist in geology, that granites forming the 
axis of mountain chains were formed in a fluid. 
We must give Cuvier the credit of fully appreciat- 
ing the value of fossils as being what he calls “ his- 
torical documents,” also for appreciating the fact that 
there were a number of revolutions marking either 
the incoming or end ofa geological period; but as he 
failed to perceive the unity of organization in organic 
beings, and their genetic relationship, as had been in- 
dicated by Lamarck and by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, so 
in geological history he did not grasp, as did Lamarck, 
the vast extent of geological time, and the general 
uninterrupted continuity of geological events. He 
was analytic, thoroughly believing in the importance 
of confining himself to the discovery of facts, and, 
considering the multitude of fantastic hypotheses and 
suggestions of previous writers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, this was sound, sensible, and thoroughly scien- 
tific. But unfortunately he did not stophere. Master 
of facts concerning the fossil mammals of the Paris 
Basin, he also—usually cautious and always a shrewd 
man of the world—fell into the error of writing 
his “theory of the world,’ and of going to the ex- 
treme length of imagining universal catastrophes 
where there are but local ones, a universal Noachian 
deluge when there was none, and of assuming that 
there were at successive periods thoroughgoing total 
