brought into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. It was
gravely maintained and taught that the end of every geological
epoch was signalised by a cataclysm, by which every living being on
the globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand-new creation
when the world returned to quiescence. A scheme of nature which
appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers
of whist, at the end of each of which the players upset the table
and called for a new pack, did not seem to shock anybody.

I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a
single responsible representative of these opinions left. The
progress of scientific geology has elevated the fundament principle
of uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be
sought in the study of the present, into the position of an axiom;
and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all
listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly find
a single patient hearer at the present day."

Of the party above referred to as not satisfied with this conception
described by Professor Huxley, there were two classes. The great
majority were admirers of the _Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation_--a work which, while it sought to show that organic evolution
has taken place, contended that the cause of organic evolution, is "an
impulse" supernaturally "imparted to the forms of life, advancing them,
... through grades of organization." Being nearly all very inadequately
acquainted with the facts, those who accepted the view set forth in the
_Vestiges_ were ridiculed by the well-instructed for being satisfied
with evidence, much of which was either invalid or easily cancelled by
counter-evidence, and at the same time they exposed themselves to the
ridicule of the more philosophical for being content with a supposed
explanation which was in reality no explanation: the alleged "impulse"
to advance giving us no more help in understanding the facts than does
Nature's alleged "abhorrence of a vacuum" help us to understand the
ascent of water in a pump. The remnant, forming the second of these
classes, was very small. While rejecting this mere verbal solution,
which both Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck had shadowed forth in other
language, there were some few who, rejecting also the hypothesis
indicated by both Dr. Darwin and Lamarck,