10 THE THEOKY OF EVOLUTION 



established twenty-nine quite different creations, each 

 quite independent of the other, which owed their 

 existence rather to twenty-nine different acts of 

 creation. This happened so late as the year 1849. 



1 A first creation/ said d'Orbigny, ' shows itself in 

 the Silurian formation. After the entire destruction 

 of this by some geological cause, and after expiry 

 of a considerable period, there occurred a second crea- 

 tion in the Devonian formation and thereafter twenty- 

 seven successive and different creations have repeopled 

 the whole earth with plants and animals in connection 

 with the geological cataclysms which had previously 

 destroyed all living nature. These are facts, certain 

 but incomprehensible facts, which we confine ourselves 

 to stating without attempting to pierce the super- 

 terrestrial secret which enfolds them/ x 



We point out that such eminent men as Cuvier (the 

 father of Palaeontology) and his pupils found the 

 separate successive organic worlds so fundamentally 

 different from each other that they conceived abso- 

 lutely no idea that the later ones could arise from the 

 former. Therefore no one either can or should doubt 

 any longer that the organisms really appeared different 

 in the past than they do now, and, moreover, the com- 

 parative difference is the greater the older they are. 

 Both facts are established by investigators who had 

 no interest whatever that it was so ; rather did it 

 confuse them to be thus confronted with ' incompre- 

 hensible facts/ 



1 Deperet-Wegner : Die Unibildung der Tienvelt, p. 15. 



