WORK IN PALEONTOLOGY 



149 



He then adds his proofs of the occurrence of rev- 

 olutions before the existence of living beings. Like 

 Lamarck, Cuvier was a Wernerian, and in speaking 

 of the older or primitive crystalline rocks which con- 

 tain no vestige of fossils, he accepted the view of the 

 German theorist in geology, that granites forming the 

 axis of mountain chains were formed in a fluid. 



We must give Cuvier the credit of fully appreciat- 

 ing the value of fossils as being what he calls " his- 

 torical documents," also for appreciating the fact that 

 there were a number of revolutions marking either 

 the incoming or end of a geological period ; but as he 

 failed to perceive the unity of organization in organic 

 beings, and their genetic relationship, as had been in- 

 dicated by Lamarck and by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, so 

 in geological history he did not grasp, as did Lamarck, 

 the vast extent of geological time, and the general 

 uninterrupted continuity of geological events. He 

 was analytic, thoroughly believing in the importance 

 of confining himself to the discovery of facts, and, 

 considering the multitude of fantastic hypotheses and 

 suggestions of previous writers of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, this was sound, sensible, and thoroughly scien- 

 tific. But unfortunately he did not stop here. Master 

 of facts concerning the fossil mammals of the Paris 

 Basin, he also — usually cautious and always a shrewd 

 man of the world — fell into the error of writing 

 his " theory of the world," and of going to the ex- 

 treme length of imagining universal catastrophes 

 where there are but local ones, a universal Noachian 

 deluge when there was none, and of assuming that 

 there were at successive periods thoroughgoing total 



