CHAPTEE VIL 



GROWTH OF GEOLOGY.* 



OATACLYSMAL, UNIFOBMITAEIAN, EVOLTJTIONAKY. 



THESE are cumbrous words for the heading of a 

 paragraph, and yet they are serviceable to sum up 

 the three chief phases of geology during the nine- 

 teenth century. For if it be borne in mind that 

 phases of science do not end abruptly like the reigns 

 of kings, but overlap and dovetail, the words caia- 

 clysmal, uniformitarian, and evolutionary may serve 

 with some usefulness to emphasise the changes of 

 outlook in the geology of the period under discussion. 



Cataclysmdl. The nickname cataclysmal or catas- 

 trophic applies to those who saw no way of explain- 

 ing the features of the earth's face its ridges, 

 wrinkles, dents, and scars without postulating con- 

 vulsions and cataclysms, fires and flood, not only on 

 a scale vastly greater than any analogous occurrences 

 now to be observed on our, on the whole, very sedate 

 earth, but even different in kind. Cuvier, and to 

 some extent Buffon, may be named as champions of 

 the catastrophic theory. 



Uniformitarian. From this way of looking at 

 things a recoil was inevitable when a growing appre- 

 ciation of scientific method made it clear that in 

 geological interpretation, as elsewhere, we must not 



* The history of geology relied on is Karl Alfred von 

 Zittel's Geschichte der Geologic und Palaontologie, 1899; 

 translated (1901) by Dr. Maria Ogilvie-Gordon. 



