470 Catastrophism and Evolution. [ August, 
species march, I feel warranted in harboring the belief that catas- 
trophe was an integral part of the cause ; changed life, the effect. 
Biologists are accustomed to explain the cause of a great gap 
like that which divides the Palzozoic and Mesozoic life by an 
admission that the Paleozoic forms ceased to live, but that the 
succeeding changed forms at the beginning of the Mesozoic were 
not the local progeny, greatly modified by catastrophic change, 
but merely immigrants from some other conveniently assumed 
country. They succeed in rendering this highly probable, if not 
certain, in many instances. But they are estopped from always 
advancing this migration theory. Greek art was fond of decorat- 
ing the friezes of its sacred edifices with the spirited form of the 
horse. Times change; around the new temple of evolution the 
proudest ornament is that strange procession of fossil horse skele- 
tons, among whose captivating splint-bones.and general anatomy 
may be descried the profiles of Huxley and Marsh. Those two 
authorities, whose knowledge we may not dispute, assert that the 
American genealogy of the horse is the most perfect demonstra- 
tive proof of derivative genesis ever presented. Descent they 
consider proved, but the fossil jaws are utterly silent as to what 
the cause of the evolution may have been. 
I have studied the country from which these bones came, and 
am able to make this suggestive geological commentary. Be- 
tween each two successive forms of the horse there was a catas- 
trophe which seriously altered the climate and configuration of 
the whole region in which these animals lived. Huxley and 
Marsh assert that the bones prove descent. My own work proves 
that each new modification succeeded a catastrophe. And the 
almost universality of such coincidences is to my mind warrant 
for the anticipation that not very far in the future it may be seen 
that the evolution of environment has been the major cause of 
the evolution of life; that a mere Malthusian struggle was not 
the author and finisher of evolution; but that He who brought 
to bear that mysterious energy we call life upon primeval matter 
bestowed at the same time a power of development by changes 
_ arranging that the interaction of energy and matter which make 
up environment should, from time to time, burst in upon the cur- 
rent of life and sweep it onward and upward to ever higher and 
better manifestations. Moments of great catastrophe, thus trant 
lated into the language of life, become moments of creation, 
when out of plastic organisms something newer and nobler 18 
called into being. 
