"But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Cuvier and the modern school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous. From beginning to end of Cuvier's method and its applications, assumptions were made for which there was no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demonstrable facts. The very point to be proved was taken for granted, and the evolutionary geologists who boasted of their avoidance of speculation, were in reality among the most hopelessly speculative of all the generations that had tried to solve the problem of the theory of the earth." FOOTNOTES: [13] The onion-coat hypothesis, which is the only other alternative, modern science professes to have abandoned. [14] When the text-books speak of ten or twelve miles thickness of the fossiliferous rocks, the reader should remember how the rocks have to be patched up together from here and there to make this incredible thickness, as only a small fraction of such a thickness exists in any one place. [15] "Manual," p. 399, Fourth Ed. [16] "Manual," p. 408. [17] "Manual of Historical Geol.," p. 74. [18] "Hist.," p. 360. [19] "Founders of Geology," p. 112. CHAPTER IV FACT NUMBER TWO If we had ample evidence that a certain man was personally acquainted with Julius Caesar, that they were born in the same town, went to school together, served in the same wars, and later carried on an extensive mutual correspondence, would we not conclude that they must have lived in the same age of the world's history? I confess that the conclusion seems quite unavoidable. Who would dream that eighteen centuries or more had separated the two lives, and that while one was an old Roman the other was an American of the latter nineteenth century? Some such a puzzle as this is presented in geology under the general subject of =conformability=. Let me define this term.