WORK IN PALA ONTCLOGY 151 
our present knowledge, properly be deemed not only 
totally inadequate, but childish and fantastic. 
Cuvier cites the view of Dolomieu, the well-known 
ceologist and mineralogist (1770-1801), only, how- 
ever, to reject it, who went tothe extent of supposing 
that “tides of seven or eight hundred fathoms have 
carried off from time to time the bottom of the ocean, 
throwing it up in mountains and hills on the primi- 
tive valleys and plains of the continents ” (Dolomieu 
in Journal de Physique). 
Cuvier met with objections to his extreme views. 
In his discourse he thus endeavors to answer “the 
following objection” which “has already been stated 
against my conclusions ’ 
“Why may not the non-existing races of mam- 
miferous land quadrupeds be mere modifications or 
varieties of those ancient races which we now find in 
the fossil state, which modifications may have been 
produced by change of climate and other local cir- 
cumstances, and since raised to the present excessive 
differences by the operation of similar causes during 
a long succession of ages ? 
« This objection may appear strong to those who 
believe in the indefinite possibility of change of forms 
marine animals. ‘‘ As these revolutions,” he says, ‘‘have consisted 
chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have 
destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption 
over the land was general, they must have destroyed the entire 
class, or, if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must 
have destroyed at least all the species inhabiting these continents, 
without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the 
other hand, millions of aquatic animals may have been left quite dry, 
or buried in newly formed strata or thrown violently on the coasts, 
while their races may have been still preserved in more peaceful parts 
of the sea, whence they might again propagate and spread after the 
agitation of the water had ceased.’ 
