BARON CUVIER. 55 



learned author, with MM. De Luc and Dolomieu, " t!iat if 

 there be any thing positive in geology, it is, that the surface 

 of our globe has been the victim of a great and sudden revo- 

 luiion, the date of which cannot be carried back further 

 than from five to six thousand years ; that this revolution 

 has buried and caused the disappearance of countries for- 

 merly inhabited by man, and animals whicli are now 

 known ; and, on the other hand, has exposed the bottom 

 of the water, and has formed from that the countries now" 

 inhabited .... but these countries which are now dry had 

 already been inhabited, if not by man, at least by terrestial 

 animals ; consequently one preceding revolution at least 

 must have covered them with water, and, if we may judge by 

 the different orders of animals of which we find the remains, 

 they had perhaps been submitted to two or three irruptions 

 of the sea ; and these irruptions, these repeated retreats, 

 have not all been slow^ or gradual. The greater number of 

 the catastrophes which brought them about have been sud- 

 den, a fact easily proved by the last of all, the traces of 

 which are most manifest, and which has still left in the 

 North, the bodies of large quadrupeds, seized by the ice, 

 and by it preserved, even to our own times, with their skin, 

 their fur, and their flesh. Had they not been frozen as soon 

 as killed, putrefaction would have decomposed them : and 

 this eternal frost has only prevailed over the places inhabit- 

 ed by them, in consequence of tlie same catastrophe which 

 has destroyed them ; the cause, therefore, has been as sud- 

 den as the effect it produced." 



The ideas of M. Cuvier on the relative ages of the strata 

 of deposited soils, extending even to different chains of 

 mountains, have led to the present system adopted by geolo- 

 gists, and from them it may be concluded, that " all these 

 layers of deposited soils having been necessarily formed in 

 a horizontal position, the most ancient are those which have 

 been more or less raised towards a vertical line by some car- 

 tastrophe, and the most recent are, on the contrary, the hori- 

 zontal layers ; because, having preserved their original sit- 

 uation, it is evident that they could only be formed after 

 the revolution which changed the position of those which 

 are oblique, which they more or less cover, and on which 

 they rest." 



