THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIEN'CE 



if possible, even more marked ; for here it is clear that 

 elevation and valley have been carved by the elements 

 out of land that rose from the sea as level plateaus. 



But that this herculean labor of land-sculpturing could 

 have been accomplished by the slow action of wind and 

 frost and shower was an idea few men could grasp 

 within the first half-century after Hutton propounded 

 it; nor did it begin to gain general currency until 

 Ly ell's crusade against catastrophism, begun about 1830, 

 had for a quarter of a century accustomed geologists to 

 the thought of slow continuous changes producing final 

 results of colossal proportions. And even long after 

 that, it was combated by such men as Murchison, Di- 

 rector-General of the Geological Surve\ 7 of Great Brit- 

 ain, then accounted the foremost field-geologist of his 

 time, who continued to believe that the existing valleys 

 owe their main features to subterranean forces of up- 

 heaval. Even Murchison, however, made some recession 

 from the belief of the Continental authorities, lie de 

 Beaumont and Leopold von Buch, who contended that 

 the mountains had sprung up like veritable jacks-in-the- 

 box. Yon Buch, whom his friend and fellow-pupil von 

 Humboldt considered the foremost geologist of the time, 

 died in 1853, still firm in his early faith that the erratic 

 bowlders found high on the Jura had been hurled there, 

 like cannon-balls, across the valley of Geneva by the 

 sudden upheaval of a neighboring mountain range. 



in 



The bowlders whose presence on the crags of the Jura 

 the old German accounted for in a manner so theatrical 

 had long been a source of contention among geologists. 



130 



