" In England, France, and Germany, belief
that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah was widely
insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.[230]
But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the
Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's
Bible--could stop it, and the foundations of this theological
theory began to crumble away. The process was, indeed, slow; it
required a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's
truth, as revealed in Nature--such men as Hooke, Linnaeus,
Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to push their
works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which could
not be resisted, to undermine it. As we arrive at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in
this field. Blumenbach, Von Buch, and Schlotheim led the way,
but most important on the Continent was the work of Cuvier. In
the early years of the present century his researches among
fossils began to throw new light into the whole subject of
geology.
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