WORK IN PALEONTOLOGY 



151 



our present knowledge, properly be deemed not only 

 totally inadequate, but childish and fantastic. 



Cuvier cites the view of Dolomieu, the well-known 

 geologist and mineralogist (i 770-1 801), only, how- 

 ever, to reject it, who went to the extent of supposing 

 that " tides of seven or eight hundred fathoms have 

 carried off from time to time the bottom of the ocean, 

 throwing it up in mountains and hills on the primi- 

 tive valleys and plains of the continents " (Dolomieu 

 in Journal de Physique). 



Cuvier met with objections to his extreme views. 

 In his discourse he thus endeavors to answer " the 

 following objection " which " has already been stated 

 against my conclusions ": 



" Why may not the non-existing races of mam- 

 miferous land quadrupeds be mere modifications or 

 varieties of those ancient races which we now find in 

 the fossil state, which modifications may have been 

 produced by change of climate and other local cir- 

 cumstances, and since raised to the present excessive 

 differences by the operation of similar causes during 

 a long succession of ages ? 



" This objection may appear strong to those who 

 believe in the indefinite possibility of change of forms 



marine animals. "As these revolutions," he says, "have consisted 

 chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have 

 destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption 

 over the land was general, they must have destroyed the entire 

 class, or, if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must 

 have destroyed at least all the species inhabiting these continents, 

 without having the same effect upon the marine animals. On the 

 other hand, millions of aquatic animals may have been left quite dry, 

 or buried in newly formed strata or thrown violently on the coasts, 

 while their races may have been still preserved in more peaceful parts 

 of the sea, whence they might again propagate and spread after the 

 agitation of the water had ceased." 



