186 The Palaeontological Record. I. Animals 



of existing organisms, but belonged to extinct species and genera, an 

 altogether revolutionary conception, which startled the scientific 

 world. Cuvier made careful studies, especially of fossil vertebrates, 

 from the standpoint of zoology and was thus the founder of 

 palaeontology as a biological science. His great work on Ossements 

 Fossiles (Paris, 1821) has never been surpassed as a masterpiece 

 of the comparative method of anatomical investigation, and has 

 furnished to the palaeontologist the indispensable implements of 

 research. 



On the other hand, Cuvier's theoretical views regarding the 

 history of the earth and its successive faunas and floras are such 

 as no one believes to-day. He held that the earth had been re- 

 peatedly devastated by great cataclysms, which destroyed every 

 living thing, necessitating an entirely new creation, thus regarding 

 the geological periods as sharply demarcated and strictly contem- 

 poraneous for the whole earth, and each species of animal and plant 

 as confined to a single period. Cuvier's immense authority and his 

 commanding personality dominated scientific thought for more than 

 a generation and marked out the line which the development of 

 palaeontology was to follow. The work was enthusiastically taken 

 up by many very able men in the various European countries and 

 in the United States, but, controlled as it was by the belief in the 

 fixity of species, it remained almost entirely descriptive and consisted 

 in the description and classification of the different groups of fossil 

 organisms. As already intimated, this narrowness of view had its 

 compensations, for it deferred generalisations until some adequate 

 foundations for these had been laid. 



Dominant as it was, Cuvier's authority was slowly undermined 

 by the progress of knowledge and the way was prepared for the 

 introduction of more rational conceptions. The theory of "Cata- 

 strophism" was attacked by several geologists, most effectively by 

 Sir Charles Lyell, who greatly amplified the principles enunciated 

 by Hutton and Playfair in the preceding century, and inaugurated 

 a new era in geology. Lyell's uniformitarian views of the earth's 

 history and of the agencies which had wrought its changes, had 

 undoubted effect in educating men's minds for the acceptance of 

 essentially similar views regarding the organic world. In palaeontology 

 too the doctrine of the immutability of species, though vehemently 

 maintained and reasserted, was gradually weakening. In reviewing 

 long series of fossils, relations were observed which pointed to genetic 

 connections and yet were interpreted as purely ideal. Agassiz, for 

 example, who never accepted the evolutionary theory, drew attention 

 to facts which could be satisfactorily interpreted only in terms of 

 that theory. Among the fossils he indicated "progressive," "syn- 



