When Darwin visited the Galapagos, he wrote in his journal:

The mind at first is hurried into the belief of some great catastrophe, but thus to destroy animals, both large and small … we must shake the entire framework of the globe.

Two decades later, in Origin of Species, he wrote:

We may feel certain … that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of great length.

Velikovsky notes that the geological catastrophist school of Buckland and Cuvier, that dominated the early 19th century, was swept aside by Darwin and Lyell, the founders of evolutionary science.

The cosmic catastrophe cycle was either covered up, or replaced with a more palatable gradualist view.