2i6 Clay pole on Darwin and Geology. 
cific and Atlantic oceans? All this within the existence of re- 
cent species! If you do not stop this, if there be a lower re- 
gion for the punishment of geologists, I believe you, my great 
master, will go there. Why, your disciples in a slow and 
creeping manner beat all the old Catastrophists who ever lived. 
You will live to be the great chief of the Catastrophists." 
In a subsequent letter he adopts a different tone, and dissect- 
ing mercilessly the evidence adduced by these continent-mon- 
gers, he shows its insufficiency to prove their point and avows his 
adhesion to the party that asserts the stability of the great main 
lines of the earth's geography, adding that he would much like 
to be convinced by the arguments of his "master" but finds it 
impossible. Here again Darwin's sagacious "anticipation" was 
ahead of Lyell's caution. 
It is scarcely necessary to add that all these vast continental 
extensions have again sunk below the sea level leaving not a 
solitary oceanic islet or reef of secondary or palaeozoic rock to 
mark the place of their supposed existence. The theory that 
made possible the "Lemuria" and the gulf-weed continent of 
Forbes, and Antarctic bridge of Hooker is as dead as 's 
Atlantis. 
We now approach the great event of Darwin's life, but as it 
only concerns us indirectly we shall not dwell on the circum- 
stances attending it. They are moreover by this time so well 
known that to detail them would repeat an oft told tale. In 
1859 appeared the "Origin of Species," in biology the most 
epoch-making book of the passing century. Its importance lies in 
the fact that in it was shown to the world for the first time, and 
shown with a wealth of fact and argument that defied refuta- 
tion, a real and active cause for the transmutation of si^ecies. 
The struggle for existence, a factor which, strange to say, had 
hitherto escaped due notice, supplied the long lacking key to 
this hitherto tantalizing problem. The flash of anticipation 
that lighted the mind of -Darwin on reading Malthus's "Essay 
on Population" was like the flash that went through the mind 
of Newton when the apple fell. The "Law of Variation" de- 
duced by the former has been as momentous and as wide-reach- 
ins: in the world of life as the "Law of Gravitation" announced 
