LYELL AND RECENT GEOLOGY. 129 
as to past ages may be drawn. Lyell termed these 
effects 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 extents 
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 became apparent, and Cuvier’s views, zoolo- 
gical as well as geological, gained the victory. The 
conviction was gradually established that long ages of 
repose and quiescence alternated on earth with shorter 
periods of universal catastrophes and revolutions."® 
