hout whole formations, and others seemed
to occur in several different formations; "the original species found in
these formations appearing to have been so constituted as to live
through a variety of changes which had destroyed hundreds of other
species which we find confined to particular beds."[72] His views as
regards fossils, as Jameson states, were probably not known to Cuvier,
and it is more than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed
that fossils appear first in "transition" or palaeozoic strata, and were
mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the
fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while
in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the remains of birds and
quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land
plants. His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the
oldest rocks are very different from any of the species of the present
time; that the newer the formation, the more do the remains approach in
form to the organic beings of the present creation, and that in the
very latest formations, fossil remains of species now existing occur.
Such advanced views as these would seem to entitle Werner to rank as one
of the founders of palaeontology.[73]

Hutton's _Theory of the Earth_ appeared in 1785, and in a more developed
state, as a separate work, in 1795.[74] "The ruins of an older world,"
he said, "are visible in the present structure of our planet, and the
strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea,
and were formed out of the waste of preexisting continents. The same
forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical
violence, even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the
sea, where they are spread out and form strata analogous to those of
more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the bottom of the
ocean, they became afterwards altered and consolidated by volcanic heat,
and were then heaved up, fractured, and contorted." Again he said: "In
the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no
prospect of an end." As Lyell remarks: "Hutton imagined that the
continents were first gradually destroyed by aqueous degradation, and
when their ruins had furnished materials for new continents, they were
upheaved by violent convulsions. He therefore required alternate periods
of general disturbance and repose."

To Hutton, therefore, we are