186 The Palaeontological Record. I. Animals 
of existing organisms, but belonged to extinct species and genera, an 
altogether revolutionary conception, which startled the scientific 
world. Cuvier made careful studies, especially of fossil vertebrates, 
from the standpoint of zoology and was thus the founder of 
palaeontology as a biological science. His great work on Ossements 
Fossiles (Paris, 1821) has never been surpassed as a masterpiece 
of the comparative method of anatomical investigation, and has 
furnished to the palaeontologist the indispensable implements of 
research. 
On the other hand, Cuvier’s theoretical views regarding the 
history of the earth and its successive faunas and floras are such 
as no one believes to-day. He held that the earth had been re- 
peatedly devastated by great cataclysms, which destroyed every 
living thing, necessitating an entirely new creation, thus regarding 
the geological periods as sharply demarcated and strictly contem- 
poraneous for the whole earth, and each species of animal and plant 
as confined to a single period. Cuvier’s immense authority and his 
commanding personality dominated scientific thought for more than 
a generation and marked out the line which the development of 
palaeontology was to follow. The work was enthusiastically taken 
up by many very able men in the various European countries and 
in the United States, but, controlled as it was by the belief in the 
fixity of species, it remained almost entirely descriptive and consisted 
in the description and classification of the different groups of fossil 
organisms. As already intimated, this narrowness of view had its 
compensations, for it deferred generalisations until some adequate 
foundations for these had been laid. 
Dominant as it was, Cuvier’s authority was slowly undermined 
by the progress of knowledge and the way was prepared for the 
introduction of more rational conceptions. The theory of “Cata- 
strophism” was attacked by several geologists, most effectively by 
Sir Charles Lyell, who greatly amplified the principles enunciated 
by Hutton and Playfair in the preceding century, and inaugurated 
a new era in geology. Lyell’s uniformitarian views of the earth’s 
history and of the agencies which had wrought its changes, had 
undoubted effect in educating men’s minds for the acceptance of. 
essentially similar views regarding the organic world. In palaeontology 
too the doctrine of the immutability of species, though vehemently 
maintained and reasserted, was gradually weakening. In reviewing 
long series of fossils, relations were observed which pointed to genetic 
connections and yet were interpreted as purely ideal. Agassiz, for 
example, who never accepted the evolutionary theory, drew attention 
to facts which could be satisfactorily interpreted only in terms of 
that theory. Among the fossils he indicated “progressive,” “syn- 
