78 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



were parts of animals formed in the bowels of the earth 

 by a process of spontaneous generation, which had died 

 before they could make their way to the surface. They 

 were sometimes described as the bones of creatures 

 stranded upon the dry land by tidal waves, or by some 

 such catastrophe as the traditional flood of the scrip- 

 tures. In medieval times, and even in our own day, 

 some people who have been opposed to the acceptance 

 of any portion of the doctrine of evolution have actually 

 defended the view that the things called fossils were 

 never the shells or bones of animals living in bygone 

 times, but that they only simulate such things and have 

 been created as such together with the layers of rock 

 from which they may have been taken. If we employed 

 the same arguments in dealing with the broken frag- 

 ments of vases and jewelry taken from the Egyptian 

 tombs or from the buried ruins of Pompeii, we would 

 have to believe that such pieces were created as frag- 

 ments and that they were never portions of complete 

 objects, just because no one alive to-day has ever seen 

 the perfect vessel or bracelet fashioned so long ago. 

 Common sense directs us to discard such a fantastic 

 interpretation in favor of the view that fossils are what 

 they seem to be — simply relics of creatures that lived 

 when the earth was younger. 



Until this common sense view was adopted there was 

 no science of palaeontology. Cuvier was the first great 

 naturalist to devote particular attention to the mainly 

 unrelated and unverified facts that had been discovered 

 before his time. He was truly the originator of this 

 branch of zoology, for he brought together the observa- 

 tions of earlier men and extended his own studies widely 



