452 Catastrophism and Evolution. [ August, 
who build arks straight through their natural lives, ready for the 
first sprinkle, and there are others who do not watch Old Proba- 
bilities or even own an umbrella. This fundamental differentia- 
tion expresses itself in geology by means of the two historic sects 
of catastrophists and uniformitarians. Catastrophism, I doubt 
not, was the only school among the Pliocene Californians after 
their families and the familiar fauna and flora of their environ- 
ment had been swept out of existence by basalts and floods. As 
understood by archaic man, by the Orientals, the early Egyp- 
tians, the Greeks, the Arabs, and indeed until modified within 
the century by the growing belief in derivative genesis, or by the 
unbroken continuity of organic life from its first introduction on 
the planet, catastrophism was briefly this : — 
The pre-human history of the planet has been variously esti- 
mated in time, from two days—the period assigned by the 
Koran — to an indefinite extension of ages. The globe having 
cooled from a condition of igneous fluidity received upon its sur-` 
face of congealed primitive rock the condensed aerial waters, 
which formed at first a general oceanic envelope, swathing the 
whole earth. Out of this universal sea emerged continents; and 
as soon as the temperature and atmospheric conditions were suit- 
able, low organisms, both of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
were created, and the complex machinery of life set in successful 
motion. 
The great obvious changes in the rocky crust were referred to 
a few processes: the subaerial decay of continents, delivery of 
land-detritus by streams into the sea, the spreading out of these 
comminuted materials upon a pelagic floor, and lastly upheaval, 
by which oceanic beds were lifted up into subsequent lan 
masses. All these processes are held to have been more rapid 
in the past than now. Suddenness, world-wide destructive- 
ness, are the characteristics of geological changes, as believed eet 
by orthodox catastrophists. Periods of calm, like the present, 
suddenly terminated by brief catastrophic epochs, form i 
groundwork of this school. Successive faunas and floras were 
created only to be extinguished by general cataclysms. i 
From all these tenets the modern uniformitarian school dis- 
sents only so far as to hold that the processes have not neces- 
sarily been more rapidly accomplished than at the rate we me i : 
ness to-day. The facts of one school are the facts of the other. 
Both read the record of upheaval and subsidence, of corrugation 
and crumpling of the great mountain chains alike. One meas- 
