At a later time, say in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, when the Origin of Species controversy was in full blast, any estimate of Cuvier by an evolutionist would have been much less laudatory. Cuvier had actively opposed that form of evolution which had been brought forward in his day, and with such power as to close the discussion for a time. The assailants of the Origin of Species found his refutation of unity of type and progressive development adaptable to the new situation, and the reasoning which had pulverised Geoffrey St. Hilaire was brought out again in order to pulverise Darwin. Then the supporters of Darwin found it necessary to show that Cuvier was by no means infallible. This they were able to do without introducing matter foreign to the main question, for Cuvier's exposition of fixity of species, of the principles of classification and of the process of extinction, were entirely opposed to the beliefs not only of Darwin, but of Lyell and the whole school which stood out for historical continuity, treated history of every kind as a process of development, extended almost without limit the duration of life on the earth, and enforced the obvious but neglected truth that results of any magnitude whatever may proceed from small causes operating through a sufficient length of time. Darwin's main contentions are now accepted by the scientific world, and Cuvier's hostility to particular forms of evolution has become a mere historical episode of no lasting importance. Angry disputes concerning the weight of his authority are at an end; he is not to be blamed because thirty years after his death he was set up as judge of a cause which he had not heard. We are now ready to make fair allowance for the time in which his lot was cast—an age when geology, embryology, palæontology, and distribution were mere infants, some of them hardly yet born. We can also admit without reserve the incompetence of certain of Cuvier's antagonists, and justify the severity with which he treated unity of type as stated and defended by Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Now that the dust of controversy has settled, we are chiefly concerned to inquire: What of all Cuvier's work has proved to be really permanent? His zoology and his comparative anatomy have had to be completely re-cast, partly because of the new light thrown on them by embryology and the doctrine of descent with modification. His studies of extinct vertebrates, however, called into existence a new science, the science of Palæontology,[33] and it is mainly this which gives him a lasting and honoured place in the history of biology.