310 
KIRTLEY F. MATHER 
II 
Had you asked a paleontologist of two or three generations 
ago these questions which we are now propounding, the chances 
are he would have replied unhesitatingly that life had progressed 
in the past by virtue of a succession of violent and tragic revolu- 
tions. For this was the belief and teaching of Cuvier, Lord of 
France, and one of the greatest of the founders of the science of 
Paleontology. Embedded in the gypsum quarried from the hill of 
Montmartre, now included within the limits of the city of Paris, 
Cuvier had found remarkably well preserved fossil bones of 
animals which he correctly inferred had been living in that 
region at the time the rock strata in which they were entombed 
had been accumulated. His knowledge of living creatures 
from all parts of the world was unusually extensive, and he 
clearly saw that these relics of the past represented animals 
quite unlike any known existing ones. They must be members 
of vanished races, swept out of existence in the prime of life 
by some overwhelming catastrophe such as the inundation of 
the sea over a subsiding continent, but whose remains had been 
fortunately preserved and were now displayed in Nature’s vast 
museum. Perhaps the very floods of sea water from which the 
gypsum had been precipitated had also drowned the hapless 
inhabitants of the land, whose bones were buried on the sea floor. 
Thus arose the doctrine of ^^catastrophism,” a doctrine 
which was subsequently expanded until it enthroned the princi- 
ple of revolution as the prime factor in the forward march of 
life. In the minds of Cuvier’s followers, during the earlier 
half of the nineteenth century, it was the general belief that the 
cataclysms were world- wide, and that the slaughter of the older 
assemblage of animals and plants was followed by the special 
creation of a new and more improved group of creatures to 
inhabit the vacant spheres of activity. D ’Orbigny, for example, 
taught that ^Twenty-seven times in succession, distinct crea- 
tions have come to repeople the whole earth with its plants 
and animals after each of the geological disturbances which 
destroyed everything in living nature.” 
I 
