TWO ANTAGONIST DOCTRINES OF GEOLOGY. 663 



allowed, perhaps very unjustly, to weigh strongly 

 against them in the public opinion. 



While the rest of Europe had a decided bias 

 towards the doctrine of geological catastrophes, the 

 phenomena of Italy, which, as we have seen, had 

 already tended to soften the rigour of that doctrine, 

 in the progress of speculation from Steno to Gene- 

 relli, were destined to mitigate it still more, by 

 converting to the belief of uniformity transalpine 

 geologists who had been bred up in the catastro- 

 phist creed. This effect was, indeed, gradual. For 

 a time the distinction of the recent and the tertiary 

 period was held to be marked and strong. Brocchi 

 asserted that a large portion of the Sub-Apennine 

 fossil shells belonged to living species of the Medi- 

 terranean Sea: but the geologists of the rest of 

 Europe turned an incredulous ear to this Italian 

 tenet; and the persuasion of the distinction of the 

 tertiary and the recent period was deeply impressed 

 on most geologists by the memorable labours of 

 Cuvier and Brongniart on the Paris basin. Still, as 

 other tertiary deposits were examined, it was found 

 that they could by no means be considered as con- 

 temporaneous, but that they formed a chain of 

 posts, advancing nearer and nearer to the recent 

 period. Above the strata of the basins of London 

 and Paris 5 , lie the newer strata of Touraine, of 

 Bourdeaux, of the valley of the Bormida and the 

 Superga near Turin, and of the basin of Vienna, ex- 



6 Lyell, 1st ed. vol. iii. p. 61. 



