Note 1081 — Chapter VII

Even Cuvier held the doctrine of catastrophes; but, as Sir Charles Lyell says (Principles of Geology, p. 60), his own discoveries supplied the means of overthrowing it, and of familiarizing us with the idea of continuity. Indeed it was one of the fossil observations of Cuvier which first supplied the link between reptiles, fishes, and cetaceous mammals. See Owen on Fossil Reptiles, pp. 60, 198, Brit. Assoc. for 1841; and compare Carus's Comparative Anatomy, vol. i. p. 155. To this I may add, that Cuvier unconsciously prepared the way for disturbing the old dogma of fixity of species, though he himself clung to it to the last. See some observations, which are very remarkable, considering the period when they were written, in Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, pp. 427, 428: conclusions drawn from Cuvier, which Cuvier would have himself rejected.