LYELL AND RECENT GEOLOGY. 



129 



as to past ages may be drawn. Lyell termed these ef- 

 fects an autobiography of the earth. " The forces now 

 operating upon earth are the same in kind and degree as 

 those which in the remotest times produced geological 

 changes." 



Probably, in consequence of the havoc caused by local 

 floods and earthquakes, a belief in great and universal 

 catastrophes was formed at a very early period; and to 

 the Indian and Egyptian legends on this subject Lyell 

 appends the remark, that the traditional connection of 

 such catastrophes with a belief in repeated and universal 

 corruption of morals may be easily explained. 



At the end of the last century, the opinion was here 

 and there expressed that the submergence of large ex- 

 tents of land, and the emergence of others, had taken 

 place slowly; and the doctrine was in preparation that 

 the mineral masses fall into various groups, succeeding 

 one another in definite order. Werner then appeared 

 and founded the special science of " Geognosy." He 

 was not the first to see and teach the regular succession 

 of rocks, but the sensation which he caused was uni- 

 versal. From his time dates the violent controversy of 

 the Vulcanists and Neptunists, and into the midst of this 

 controversy fell Cuvier's great discoveries on the animals 

 of the Tertiary formation in the vicinity of Paris. By 

 the works of Cuvier and Lamarck on fossil animals, the 

 differences betwixt ancient and modern organisms be- 

 came apparent, and Cuvier's views, zoological as well as 

 geological, gained the victory. The conviction was grad- 

 ually established that long ages of repose and quiescence 

 alternated on earth with shorter periods of universal catas- 

 trophes and revolutions."" 



