158 Claypole on (Darivin and Geology. 
while their opponents took and held possession of the public 
ear. It is amusing and at the same time instructive now to read 
the works that were then issued — many of them in perfect hon- 
esty but some we fear by mere special pleaders — to show that 
there is no inconsistency between the narrative in the Hebrew 
Scripture, literally interiDreted, and the story of the rocks. The 
bed of Procrustes was a trifle compared with the extraordinary 
torture which was applied to both in order to bring them into 
accord. The treatment of the geologic record involved, often 
through ignorance, the suppression of the most awkard difficul- 
ties and the most obvious facts, so that the version gave but a 
garbled report of the story of the rocks; while on the other side 
we are reminded of the acute remark of professor Huxley that 
a "layman can only stand aside and marvel at the wondrous 
flexibility of a language which admits of so different and even 
opposite interpretations." 
To this class of books belong Granville Penn's Comparative 
Estimate of the JSIincral and Mosaical Geologies, Pye Smith's 
Scriptm-e and Geology, and last, though by no means least, 
The Testimo72y of the Rocks, which may truly be said to have 
been purchased with the life of Scotland's great geologist, Hugh 
Miller. To these we refer such of our readers as desire more 
detail concerning the state of the geological world on this point 
during the past half century. 
Such a condition of thought naturally associated orthodoxy 
with one school and heterodoxy with the other. Those who 
essayed to maintain against heavy odds the literal accuracy of 
the Mosaic poem of creation, direct and special, formed the 
party of the Catastrophlsts, and were in the majority. Their 
opi^onents, few in number and weak in position, who supported 
the view that the present fauna and flora of the earth are, in 
some as yet not fully explained way, the direct and lineal de- 
scendants of others previously existing through a vast lapse of 
time, were later known as Ui/lformltarlai/s. The leading 
scientific apostle of the former was the French geologist, Elie 
de Beaumont. From an examination of the mountain-systems 
of the earth this distinguished savant had deduced the theory 
that all parallel ranges were coeval. By a refinement on his 
theory, which the data were quite incapable of justifying, he 
