880 The American Naturalist. [October, 
The steps required to bring any science from a state of chaos 
to one at all approaching precision are innumerable. The 
records of these steps are mostly buried in official reports of 
governmental surveys, technical periodicals, or in the ponder- 
ous proceedings of learned societies. It is especially so with 
geology. To those familiar with these records there is much 
to excite wonder and surprise. There are romances hidden in 
them. There are wordy wars and fierce intellectual combats. 
There are charges and counter-charges. There are victories or 
defeats, equal in one sense to those of Austerlitz or Waterloo. 
It needs but the mention of the Darwinian combat to call one 
of these wars tomind. Another, but more obscure one, relates 
to the first forms of life upon the earth, and it is the intention 
here to call attention to this. 
It is only a little over one hundred years since the first 
scientific observations upon stratified rocks and fossils were 
recorded. It was natural that, in the early part of this cen- 
tury, the crudest ideas should prevail regarding these subjects. 
The origin and cause of stratification were unknown. The 
nature of fossils and their value as: indices to pre-existing 
forms of the animal or vegetable kingdom had not been 
thought of. Some few of the shrewder heads, Rafinesque 
among them, had begun to see the value of fossils as early as 
1818, but the general opinion was probably that expressed by 
Amos Eaton in that year in the first edition of his “ Index to 
the Geology of the Northern States.” Here he announced it 
as his belief that the land inhabited by the first human beings 
was supported by two segments of granite, beneath which was 
an immense sea. The North American Continent, he said, 
“may now be supported in the same way: and the meeting of 
the edges of the segments may be near the granitic ridge which 
extends from Georgia to the Frigid Zone.” He further sup- 
posed that, during the Deluge, all animals, except those pre- 
served by Noah, were destroyed, and the petrified remains we 
now find are some of the species overwhelmed by that catas- 
trophe. “ Noah,” said he, “ took into the Ark the land animals 
of the island or continent whereon he resided. This is now 
