104 



PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



The story of the Deluge was held to furnish suf- 

 ficing explanation of the organic remains yielded by 

 the rocks, but failing this, a multitude of fantastic 

 theories were at hand to explain the fossils. They 

 were said to be due to a " formative quality " in the 

 soil; to its "plastic virtue"; to a " lapidific juice"; 

 to the " fermentation of fatty matter "; to " the influ- 

 ence of the heavenly bodies," or, as the late eminent 

 naturalist, Philip Gosse, seriously suggested in his 

 whimsical book Omphalos: an Attempt to untie 

 the Geological Knot, they were but simulacra where- 

 with a mocking Deity rebuked the curiosity of man. 

 Every explanation, save the right and obvious one, 

 had its defenders, because it was essential to support 

 some theory to rebut the evidence supplied by re- 

 mains of animals as to the existence of death in 

 the world before the fall of Adam. Otherwise, the 

 statements in the Old Testament, on which the Paul- 

 ine reasoning rested, were baseless, and to discredit 

 these was to undermine the authority of the Scrip- 

 tures from Genesis to the Apocalypse. No wonder, 

 therefore, that theology was up in arms, or that it 

 saw in geology a deadlier foe than astronomy had 

 seemed to be in ages past. The Sorbonne, or Faculty 

 of Theology, in Paris burnt the books of the geolo- 

 gists, banished their authors, and, in the case of 

 Buffon, the famous naturalist, condemned him to re- 

 tract the awful heresy, which was declared " con- 

 trary to the creed of the Church," contained in these 

 words: "The waters of the sea have produced the 



