EEVOLUTION VS. EVOLUTION 
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Or, if the idea of numerous distinct creations’’ is somewhat 
repugnant because it leaves open the way for the flippant sug- 
gestion that the Creator was not at first an expert artisan but 
required a lot of practice before he became sufficiently adept 
to perform his functions properly on a certain Saturday in the 
year 4004 B.C., the theory of catastrophism may be slightly 
amended. Let it be supposed that the devastating cataclysm 
was not quite world-wide, but that individuals here and there 
escaped to become the progenitors of the new assemblage of 
living creatures. This was apparently about what Cuvier 
really had in mind. In times of excessively arid climate 
there would somewhere be an oasis where a few favored individ- 
uals would escape the parching drought. When a glacial episode 
threatened to freeze the inhabitants of land and sea and spread 
a mantle of Artie snow and ice over all the face of the earth, 
the climatic pendulum would be reversed just in time to save a 
dwindling minority to serve as seed for repopulating the ice-freed 
lands. Volcanic fires and earthquake shocks ordinarily would 
not completely devastate all habitated places of the earth’s crust 
at any one time; somewhere a few individuals would escape to 
provide descendants capable of returning to the wasted lands 
when the cataclysm had ceased. Tyre and Sidon went on their 
wicked way unscathed when fire from heaven rained down upon 
Sodom and Gomorrha, you will recall. Or perchance, safety 
from inundating sea or deluge might be found upon a high 
plateau or mountain top, such for example as Mount Ararat. 
Thus by comparatively easy stages we might shift from the 
camp of Cuvier and d’Orbigny to another school of old masters 
in the science of Paleontology, among whom Sir Charles Lyell 
was foremost. Long before the time of Darwin, this group of 
scientists had come to believe in evolution of one sort or 
another and pinned their faith to the doctrine of ^ ^ continuity. ” 
They noticed that there were certain ^Tong-lived” species of 
animals and plants, whose remains were found unmodified in 
formation after formation regardless of the catastrophes which 
might have occurred in the intervals between their deposition. 
On the coast of Wales at the present time, for instance, certain 
