Amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost church-men he threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the whole mass of his authority in favour of the old theory of catastrophic changes and special creations.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving non-recognition, ill-treatment, and ridicule.

Treviranus, afar off in his mathematical lecture-room at Bremen, seemed simply forgotten.
But the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked: dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and places least expected; turned away from France, it appeared especially in England, where great paleontologists and geologists arose whose work culminated in that of Lyell.

Specialists throughout all the world now became more vigorous than ever, gathering facts and thinking upon them in a way which caused the special creation theory to shrink more and more.

Broader and more full became these various rivulets, soon to unite in one great stream of thought.
In 1813 Dr.Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural selection to account for varieties in the human race.

About 1820 Dean Herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his conviction that species are but fixed varieties.