The coming of evolution : the story of a great revolution in science / by John W. Judd.

  • Judd, John W. (John Wesley), 1840-1916.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The coming of evolution : the story of a great revolution in science / by John W. Judd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    theory, based on sound reasoning from careful obser- vation. It is true that there were men, in advance of their age, who in some cases anticipated to a certain extent this work of establishing the doctrine of evolution on a firm foundation. Thus in Italy, the earliest home of so many sciences, a Carmelite friar, Generelli, reasoning on observations made by his compatriots Fracastoro and Leonardo da Vinci in the Sixteenth Century, Steno and Scilla in the Seventeenth, and Lazzaro Moro and Marsilli in the Eighteenth Century, laid the foundations of a rational system of geology in a work published in 1749 which was characterised alike by courage and eloquence. In France, the illustrious Nicolas Desmarest, from his study of the classical region of the Auvergne, was able to show, in 1777, how the river valleys of that district had been carved out by the rivers that flow in them. Nor were there wanting geologists with similar previsions in Germany and Switzerland. But none of these early exponents of geological theory came so near to anticipating the work of the Nineteenth Century as did the illustrious James Hutton, whose ‘ Theory of the Earth/ a first sketch of which was published in 1785, was a splendid ex- position of evolution as applied to the inorganic world. Unfortunately, Hutton's theory was linked to the extravagancies of what was known at that day as i. s. 2