j : 
vin “THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES” 231 
peared now, it would meet with a very different 
reception from that which greeted it in 1859. 
One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work 
commenced by Hutton and continued with rare 
skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant view of 
the past history of the earth was catastrophic. 
Great and sudden physical revolutions, wholesale 
_ ereations and extinctions of living beings, were the 
ordinary machinery of the geological epic brought 
into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. 
It was gravely maintained and taught that the 
end of every geological epoch was signalised by a 
cataclysm, by which every living being on the 
globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand- 
new creation when the world returned to quies- 
cence. A scheme of nature which appeared to be 
modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers 
of whist, at the end of each of which the players 
upset the table and called for a new pack, did not 
seem to shock anybody. 
I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present 
time, there is a single responsible representative 
of these opinions left. The progress of scientific 
geology has elevated the fundamental principle of 
- uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past 
‘is to be sought in the study of the present, into 
the position of an axiom ; and the wild specula- 
tions of the catastrophists, to which we all listened 
with respect a quarter of a century ago, would 
hardly find a single patient hearer at the present 
