William Smith and fossil shells--His discovery that fossil rocks are arranged in regular systems--Smith's inquiries taken up by Cuvier--His Ossements Fossiles containing the first description of hairy elephant--His contention that fossils represent extinct species only--Dr. Buckland's studies of English fossil-beds--Charles Lyell combats catastrophism,--Elaboration of his ideas with reference to the rotation of species--The establishment of the doctrine of uniformitarianism,--Darwin's Origin of Species--Fossil man--Dr. Falconer's visit to the fossil-beds in the valley of the Somme--Investigations of Prestwich and Sir John Evans--Discovery of the Neanderthal skull,--Cuvier's rejection of human fossils--The finding of prehistoric carving on ivory--The fossil-beds of America--Professor Marsh's paper on the fossil horses in America--The Warren mastodon,--The Java fossil, Pithecanthropus Erectus. CHAPTER IV. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN GEOLOGY James Hutton and the study of the rocks--His theory of the earth--His belief in volcanic cataclysms in raising and forming the continents--His famous paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1781---His conclusions that all strata of the earth have their origin at the bottom of the sea---His deduction that heated and expanded matter caused the elevation of land above the sea-level--Indifference at first shown this remarkable paper--Neptunists versus Plutonists--Scrope's classical work on volcanoes--Final acceptance of Hutton's explanation of the origin of granites--Lyell and uniformitarianism--Observations on the gradual elevation of the coast-lines of Sweden and Patagonia--Observations on the enormous amount of land erosion constantly taking place,--Agassiz and the glacial theory--Perraudin the chamois-hunter, and his explanation of perched bowlders--De Charpentier's acceptance of Perraudin's explanation--Agassiz's paper on his Alpine studies--His conclusion that the Alps were once covered with an ice-sheet--Final acceptance of the glacial theory--The geological ages--The work of Murchison and Sedgwick--Formation of the American continents--Past, present, and future. CHAPTER V. THE NEW SCIENCE OF METEOROLOGY