462 Catastrophism and Evolution. [ August, 
upon the life of America and the bounding oceans. I have 
called the revolutions in the American area catastrophic because 
any disturbances of land or sea, of the described scale, intensity, 
and rapidity, could not fail to have a disastrous effect on much 
of the organic world. The uniformitarian school would accept 
these crust changes with unruffled calmness ; they would read the 
record exactly as a catastrophist might, only they would assume 
unlimited time and their inch-by-inch process. The analogy of 
the present, they say, is against any acceleration of rate in the 
past, and besides, the geological record is a very imperfect docu- 
ment which does not disprove our view. In plain language, they 
start with a gratuitous assumption (vast time), fortify it by an 
analogy of unknown relevancy (the present rate), and serenely 
appeal to the absence of evidence against them as proof in their 
favor. The courage of opinion has rarely exceeded this speci- 
men of logic. If such a piece of reasoning were uttered from a 
pulpit against evolution, biology would at once take to her favor- 
ite sport of knuckle-rapping the clergy in the manner we are all 
of us accustomed to witness. In forbidding us to look for past 
rates of change differing from the present, the British uniformi- 
tarians have tied the hands of the science. By preaching so 
ototjally from the text of “ imperfection of the geological rec- 
ord,” they have put blinders on the profession. A few more 
such doctrines will reduce the science to a corpse, around 
which teleologists and biologists might hold any sort of funeral 
dance their fancy dictated. Now, because the record is not al- 
together made out is no proof whatever that it never will be. 
There was once a discovery of a very small piece of evidence; 
the Rosetta Stone, which served as a key to a vast amount of 
previously illegible material. Geology, if not strangled in its 
own house, will, in my belief, go on and dig up enough Rosetta 
Stones to translate the strata into a precise language of energy 
and time. 
As yet we have no means, beyond mere homotaxial comparison, 
for relating the crust movement of distant regions. I do not, 
however, despair of our being able to correlate the movements 
and revolutions. of different continents. At present, old-fash- 
ioned catastrophes, involving - repeated world-wide destruction 
of all life, such cataclysms as Cuvier believed in, and which 0¢- 
casioned the revolt of the biologists of his time, are justly repu- 
diated. On the other hand, the mild affirmations of the uni- 
snennis: that PEUS rates of change and indefinite time 
