Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

ly far from idle, and wrote for some of the University prizes, though without success. Several of his letters to his father have been preserved. In these he talks about his studies, mathematical a

July 20th, 1817. This is written from Yarmouth, where he is visiting Mr. Dawson Turner, the well-known antiquarian and botanist. He states that, on his way through London, he went to see the elephant at Exeter Change, Bullock's Museum, and Francillon's collection of insects. At Norwich also he saw more insects, the cathedral, and some chalk pits, in which he found an "immense number of belemnites

eft by the sea; and as the wind would naturally have begun adding from the very first, it is clear that within fifty years the sea flowed over that part. This, even Mr. T. allows, is a strong argument in favour of the recency of the changes. Dr. Arnold surprised me by telling me that he thought that the Straits of Dover were formerly joined, and that the great current and tides of the North Sea bei

ade on the road from London to Kinnordy, and records, during his stay there, not only the capture of insects,

; and he noted the columns of basalt, which, he said, were "pentagonal" in form, quite different from the "four-square" jointing of the red granite at the south-west end of Mull. With the ruins of Iona he was a little disappointed, for he wrote in his diary that "they are but poor after

d Auxerre to D?le, and he makes careful and shrewd notes on the geology, for the carriage travelling of those days, though slow, was not without its advantages-and in crossing the Jura he observes the nodular flints in a limestone, and the contrast between these mountains and the Grampians of his native land. As they descended the well-known road which leads down to Gex in Switzerland, they had the good fortune to obtain a splendid view of Mont Blanc and the Alps. From Geneva, where he notes the "most peculiar deep blue colour of the Rhone," they visited

ects, capturing "no less than seven specimens of that rare insect, Papilio Apollo."[7] He feels all the surprise and all the delight which thrills the entomologist from the British Isles when he first sets foot on the slopes of the higher Alps, and sees in abundance the rarities of his own country, besides not a few new species. But

nd falls of the Rhine, to Schaffhausen, whence they turned off to Zurich. Here he writes of the principal inn that it "partook more than any of a fault too common in Switzerland. They

of pudding-stone had come crashing down from the Rossberg, had destroyed the village of Goldau, and had converted a great tract of fertile land into a wilderness of broken rock. He dia

alked up the valley of the Aar to the Grimsel Hospice, where he passed the night, and the next morning crossed over into the valley of the Rhone to the foot of its glacier, and then walked back again to Meyringen. He remarks that on the way to the Hospice "we passed some extraordinary large bare planks of granite rock above our track, the appearance of which I could not account for." This is not surprising, for he had not yet learnt to read the "handwriting on the wall" of a vanished glacier. It

, and they saw everywhere the ruins left by the rush of the flood. The road as they approached Martigny was even then, in some places, under water; in others it was completely buried beneath sand. The lower storey of the hotel had been filled with mud and débris, which was still piled up to the courtyard. Lyell went up the valley of the Dranse to the scene of the cata

tures. On their return they went to Bologna, and then crossed the Apennines to Florence. Everywhere little touches in the diary indicate a mind exceptionally observant-such as notes on the first firefly, the fields of millet, the festooned vines seen on the plain, or the peculiar sandy zone on the northern slopes of the hil

sclosed by its pages. It shows, better perhaps than any other documents, the mental development of the future author of the "Principles of Geology." Few things, as he journeys, escape his notice; he describes

at he had never been a "hard reader," and that he appears to have spent much of his "longs" in travel-a practice which, though good for general education, counts for little in the schools-the position indicates that he possessed rather exceptional abilities and a

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Apollo; but very likely he capture

ed, as was the case at Ringstead Bay, Dorset, with the Kimeri