464 Catastrophism and Evolution. [ August, 
sume that catastrophes rest for their proof on breaks in the 
paleontological record, meaning by that the observed gaps of 
life or the absence of connecting links of fossils between older 
and newer sets of successive strata. There never was a more 
serious error. Catastrophes are far more surely proved by the 
observed mechanical rupture, displacement, engulfment, crump- 
ling, and crushing of the rocky surface of the globe. Granted 
that the evidence would have been slightly less perfect had there 
been no life till the present period, still the reading would have 
been amply conclusive. The paleontological record is as imper- 
fect as Darwin pleads, but the dynamic record is vitiated by no 
such ambiguity. 
It is the business of geology to work out the changes of the 
past configuration of the globe and its climate; to produce a 
series of maps of the successive stages of the continents and 
ocean basins, but it is also its business to investigate and fix the 
rates of change. Geology is not solely a science of ancient con- 
figuration. Itis also a history of the varying rates and mode 0 
action of terrestrial energy. The development of inorganic envi- 
ronment can and must be solved regardless of biology. It must 
be based on sound physical principles, and established by irref- 
ragable proof. The evolution of environment, a distinct branch 
of geology which must soon take form, will, I do not hesitate to 
assert, be found to depend on a few broad laws, and neither the 
uniformitarianism of Lyell and Hutton, Darwin and Haeckel, 
nor the universal catastrophism of Cuvier and the majority of 
teleologists, will be numbered among these laws. In the domi- 
nant philosophy of the modern biologist there is no admission of 
a middle ground between these two theories, which I, for one, 
am led to reject. Huxley alone, among prominent evolutionists, 
opens the door for union of the residua of truth in the two 
schools, fusing them in his proposed evolutional geology. Look- 
ing back over a trail of thirty thousand miles of geological 
travel, and after as close a research as I am capable, I am im- 
pelled to say that his far-sighted view precisely satisfies my inter- 
pretation of the broad facts of the American continent. 
The admission of even modified catastrophe, namely, suddenly- 
destructive, but not all-destructive change, is, of ‘course, a down- 
right rejection of strict uniformitarianism. `I comprehend the 
importance of the position, how far-reaching and radical the 
logical consequences of this belief must be. If true, it is noth- 
ing less than an ignited bomb-shell thrown into the camp of 
