The rise of the modern school of geology—The continuity of the operations of nature and their sameness—The necessity of studying the existing state of things in order to comprehend the past—The denial of catastrophes—Hutton’s theory of the earth the foundation of scientific geology. Many facts had been recorded regarding the ancient history of the earth, and a host of ideas, more or less absurd, had been given forth on geology, during the years which preceded and followed the reformation. Several Italian geologists had examined into the truths discovered by Pythagoras, and, as stated in the preceding pages, the nature of fossils had become understood by a few liberal minded men. The age of Newton, and the years which followed his time, were consumed, however, so far as the history of the earth was concerned, by vain attempts to form cosmogonies, to account for the origin of the globe and visible universe. There was also a fierce struggle between two great geological factions, one asserting that all rocks were the product of heat, and the other denying this _in toto_ and deciding that water was the originator. Many, and indeed nearly all, geologists taught that nature had acted during the past, by fits and starts, and that great convulsions had occurred, bringing the earth at last to its present condition. The common sense of mankind was opposed to many of these beliefs, and there was moreover a very great indisposition, on the part of many educated men, to credit that the earth was more than six thousand years old. Not a few believed that the hills and dales, mountains and plains, cliffs and valleys, were first formed as they are now. A Scottish gentleman, a quiet retiring man, having some means of his own, studied the structure of the rocks and taught himself physical geography. He mastered a great number of undoubted facts, and reasoned upon them, and produced a theory which made geology a science, instead of a jumble of guesses flavoured with the love of the marvellous.