454 Catastrophism and Evolution. . [ August, 
On the other hand, catastrophism of the orthodox sort is the 
belief in recurrent, abrupt accelerations of geologic rate of crust 
change, so violent in their rapidity as to destroy all life on the 
globe. This idea, the mere survival of a prehistoric terror, 
backed up by breaks in the paleontological record and protected 
within those safe cities of refuge, the cosmogonies, was fully cred- 
ited by so recent a great savant as Cuvier, and still counts among 
its soldiers a few of the cast-iron intellects of to-day. 
Sweeping catastrophism is an error of the past.. Radical uni- 
formitarianism, however, persists, and probably controls the faith 
of a majority of geologists and biologists. A single extract from 
so late and so important a book as Croll’s Climate and Time will 
serve to show how strong men still believe in what may be called 
homeeopathic dynamics. Speaking of uniformitarianism, Croll 
says: “ This philosophic school teaches, and that truly, that the 
great changes undergone by the earth’s crust must have been 
produced, not by convulsions and cataclysms of nature, but by 
those ordinary agencies that we see at work every day around us, 
such as rain, snow, frost, ice, and chemical action, etc.” 
Having reduced the antagonism of the two schools to a ques- 
tion of rate of transference of energy, a single illustration will 
serve to render clear how, the amount of energy remaining the 
same, this difference of rate may make the difference between 
uniformity and catastrophe. Suppose two railway trains of equal 
weight, each traveling at the rate of fifty miles an hour. On one 
steam is suddenly shut from the cylinder. The train gradually 
lessens and lessens its speed, finally coming to rest. It has re- 
quired a given definite amount of resistance, a numerically ex- 
pressible amount of work to overcome the motion of the traim. 
The other train at full speed dashes against a bridge pier and 1s 
utterly wrecked. The weight, speed, and momentum of the 
trains are identical, and precisely equal resistance has been ex- 
pended in bringing them to a stop. In one case the rate of re- 
sistance was slow, and acted merely as friction, quite harmlessly 
to life and after the uniformitarian mode. In the other the rate 
of resistance was fatally rapid, and its result catastrophe. 
Remembering distinctly that uniformitarianism claims 00è 
_ dynamic rate past and present, let us turn to the broader geolog- 
ical features of North America and try to unravel the past 
enough to test the tenets of the two schools by actual fact. Be- 
neath our America lies buried another distinct continent, — aP 
archean America. Its original coast-lines we may never be 
