following catastrophe, till the earth was rendered uninhabitable,
and its races of animals and plants were extinguished, never to
reappear in the same form. Finally, it was believed that this
feverish activity ultimately died out, and that the ancient peace
once more came to reign upon the earth. As the abnormal throes
and convulsions began to be relieved, the dry land and sea once
more resumed their relations of stability, the conditions of
life were once more established, and new races of animals and
plants sprang into existence, to last until the supervention
of another fever-fit.

Such is the past history of the globe, as sketched for us, in
alternating scenes of fruitful peace and revolutionary destruction,
by the earlier geologists. As before said, we cannot wonder at the
former general acceptance of Catastrophistic doctrines. Even in
the light of our present widely-increased knowledge, the series
of geological monuments remains a broken and imperfect one; nor
can we ever hope to fill up completely the numerous gaps with
which the geological record is defaced. Catastrophism was the
natural method of accounting for these gaps, and, as we shall see,
it possesses a basis of truth. At present, however, catastrophism
may be said to be nearly extinct, and its place is taken by the
modern doctrine of "Continuity" or "Uniformity"--a doctrine with
which the name of Lyell must ever remain imperishably associated.

The fundamental thesis of the doctrine of Uniformity is, that,
in spite of all apparent violations of continuity, the sequence
of geological phenomena has in reality been a regular and
uninterrupted one; and that the vast changes which can be shown
to have passed over the earth in former periods have been the