NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY 



shown some years before that the fossil animals of any 

 continent are closely related to the existing animals 

 of that continent edentates predominating, for ex- 

 ample, in South America, and marsupials in Australia. 

 Many observers had noted that recent strata every- 

 where show a fossil fauna more nearly like the existing 

 one than do more ancient strata ; and that fossils from 

 any two consecutive strata are far more closely related 

 to each other than are the fossils of two remote forma- 

 tions, the fauna of each 4 geological formation being, 

 indeed, in a wide view, intermediate between preced- 

 ing and succeeding faunas. 



So suggestive were all these observations that Lyell, 

 the admitted leader of the geological world, after read- 

 ing Darwin's citations, felt able to drop his own crass 

 explanation of the introduction of species and adopt 

 the transmutation hypothesis, thus rounding out the 

 doctrine of uniformitarianism to the full proportions in 

 which Lamarck had conceived it half a century before. 

 Not all paleontologists could follow him at once, of 

 course ; the proof was not yet sufficiently demonstrative 

 for that; but all were shaken in the seeming security 

 of their former position, which is always a necessary 

 stage in the progress of thought. And popular interest 

 in the matter was raised to white heat in a twinkling. 



So, for the third time in this first century of its ex- 

 istence, paleontology was called upon to play a leading 

 r61e in a controversy whose interest extended far be- 

 yond the bounds of staid truth-seeking science. And 

 the controversy waged over the age of the earth had 

 not been more bitter, that over catastrophism not more 

 acrimonious, than that which now raged over the ques- 



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