DARWIN AND PALEONTOLOGY 215 



by his familiarity through Lyell with the work 

 of the great Frenchmen Buffon, Lamarck, and 

 Cuvier. These principles were stimulated and 

 made his own by his observations during the voy- 

 age of the Beagle, and his survey of the extinct 

 life of South America. His comments on what 

 he saw exhibit a close observer of nature, the 

 geologist and biologist, the ideal paleontologist 

 except only in the technical field of anatomy. 

 He himself knew few or no lines of descent, but 

 he felt they must be found, and he set the whole 

 world in search for them. These principles of 

 paleontology were given full expression in the 

 Origin of Species. There are in that great work 

 innimierable allusions to what may now be called 

 the working method of paleontology, the method 

 which Huxley formulated and expressed in clear 

 terms in 1880. Darwin believed that the breaks 

 in the geological record caused the interruptions 

 in the hypothetical phyla, and his fond confidence 

 that they would be overcome has been more than 

 vindicated. The impulse which he gave to ver- 

 tebrate paleontology was immediate and un- 

 bounded. It found expression especially in the 

 writings of Huxley in England, of Gaudry in 

 France, of Kowalevsky in Russia, of Cope and 

 Marsh in America. These works swept aside 

 the dry fossil lore which had been accumulating 

 since the passing of Cuvier's influence, and 

 breathed the new spirit of search for the princi- 

 ples of fitness, of descent, of survival, and of ex- 



