192 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



surface of the globe, and assumed at the surface various 

 irregular shapes as they consolidated." The important 

 principle which he enunciated was, that the rocks 

 lay in a certain order, and that they therefore had 

 been deposited at successive times. 



When the chemical participation theory was rapidly 

 passing away in favour of the Huttonian views, Mur- 

 chison was abandoning his sporting proclivities, and 

 bracing himself for the life of science, in which after- 

 wards he so distinguished himself. The Wernerian 

 theory had indeed received its defeat from the researches 

 of "William Smith, " the father of English geology," 

 as he was called. His system of geological classifica- 

 tion was rapidly applied to very nearly all the countries 

 of Europe. Every year now tended to broaden the 

 base of the infant science of geology, and multiplied 

 its details. The rocks to which William Smith paid 

 most attention were those now known as the Secondary, 

 or Mesozoic rocks. 



With regard to the strata newer than these, so far 

 back as 1766, Grustavus Brauder had figured an admir- 

 able series of shells foimd in the Eocenes of Hamp- 

 shire ; and at the beginning of the present century 

 in France the labours of Baron Cuvier, and others, had 

 raised from the dead, so to speak, the extraordinary 

 group of animals living in Eocene France. In Grer- 

 many, Groldfuss had been eagerly working at the 

 animals found in caves ; and his success had induced 

 Buckland to explore the hyaena den of Kirkdale, and 

 to ransack the other caverns of this country. When 

 the principle of the classification by fossils was fully 



