Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

rbes,[116] dated September, 1846, was dying hard. "Agassiz, Alcide D'Orbigny, and their followers [were still] trying to make out sudden revolutions

not original than the contrary. It seems to me that the surest proof of the truth of such conclusions as I have summed up at the end of my essay is the fact of their not being original so far as one person is concerned, and of their having become man

r Heads of Houses only four were at Oxford to receive the Association." On this occasion, he writes, he became better acquainted with "Ruskin, who was secretary of our Geological Section." The remainder of this summer was spent in Scotland, and the rest of the year, with most of the following one, was devoted to quiet work. Still, Lyell took an active part in a crisis through which, about this time, the Royal Society was passing. A number of the Fellows, including most of those eminent in science, were anxious to raise the standard for admission into the Society. For many years past the "three letters" had often signified little more than an indication of good means and social position, coupled with a certain interest in scientific pursuits. The reformers prevailed, after a long struggle "with a set of obstructives compared with whom Metternich was a progressive animal," and the present status of the society is the result. Incidental remarks in Lyell's letters to his relations also indicate that he was becoming well known in circles other than scientific, of which a further proof was given i

o afford the expense of keeping up Kinnordy as well as a house in London. Which, then, was henceforth to be his home? The attractions of Kinnordy were obvious, but the long distance from the metropolis was a serious drawback, while the duties of a resident landlord would have interfered much with his geological work, which would have been still more hampered by the severance from libraries, museums, and intercourse with fellow-worker

aterials. Also he went to the Brocken in order to examine into Von Buch's extraordinary assertion that the granite had "come up in a bubble." This, it is needless to say, was speedily pricked. The loess also, that singular deposit which wraps like a mantle so much of the undulating ground in Northern German

ound time for some geological work in America, the most important item in which was an excursion from Halifax in company with his old acquaintance, Mr. J. W. Dawson, to the Nova Scotian coalfield. On this occasion he passed through a fair amount of country still uncleared, which made the journey more interesting; he had also opportunities of appreciating the effects of ice in moving and piling up boulders on the shores of lakes, and o

fourth time to America-on this occasion in company with Lord Ellesmere-as commissioner to the Exhibition held at New York. But now his time was fully taken up by official duties, and

nctly unfavourable. The island was proved to be mainly composed of volcanic material, cones of basaltic scoria, and great flows of similar lava, which had been piled successively one on another in the open air to a depth of about 4,000 feet. This mass had been subsequently pierced by dykes, worn by storm and stream, and in one or two places deeply grooved by rivers. There were, indeed, some un

e reference is comparatively brief. Of Palma the account is much fuller, for this island had been regarded by Von Buch, who visited it in 1825, as a type of his "craters of elevation"-an idea which was dispelled by Lyell

ntinent, studying, among other matters, the drifts in the neighbourhood of Berlin. In the summer he visited Scotland, made the acquaintance of Hugh Miller, worked over Arthur's Seat, Blackford Hill, and "the coast of Fife from Kinghorn to Kirkcaldy." It would be hard

modification. Speaking of some strange variations in the flower of an orchideous plant,[122] he refers, half in jest, to "ugly facts, as Hooker, clinging (like

. Huxley held forth last week about the oxlip, which he says is unknown on the Continent. If we had met with it in Madeira and nowhere else, or the cowslip, should we not have voted them true species? Darwin finds, among his fifteen varieties of the common pigeon, three good genera and about f

rigin. Close attention was also bestowed upon the great masses of hard quartzose grit, through which the Elbe has carved its way-the Quader of Saxony; for this formation, "a grit wholly deficient in calcareous matter, corresponds to the more purely calcareous rock (Chalk) of Great Britain, and yet contains here and there the same shells." He did not neglect the Brown Coal[124] between T?plitz and Aussig, and, on reaching Prague, made the acquaintance of Barrande, who took him to see those older Pal?ozoic rocks among which the great pal?ontologist had been labouring for nearly a quarter of a ce

ium and up the Rhine into Switzerland, halting at different places either to study sections of special interest or to confer with eminent geologists. Part of a l

nger, but not, for all that, young geologists, whom I meet everywhere, so far ahead of us old stagers that they ar

ertaining the distinctly terrestrial character of the deposits all about the mountains, he unreservedly admitted land-ice to be the only possible agent, and, in accepting this hypothesis, perceived clearly that he must not shrink from applying it to Scotland. Then he plunged into the mountains to examine and follow the track of the retreating ice-sheet up to the glaciers which are still at work among the higher peaks, passing up the valley of the Reuss, crossing the Furka Pass, and descending the Rhone valley to Visp, but turning aside to examine the earth pillars on the flank of the Eggishorn.[126] Another, and a larger group of these pillars-instances of the erosive action of rain-water on morainic material-was seen near Stalden, in the Visp-thal; but these had been damaged by the earthquake which two years before had severely shaken this part of the Alps. At Zermatt the characteristics of glaciers and the effects of ice were carefully studied among the grandest of Alpine scenery; then

some time in the neighbourhood of Rome, visiting the old volcanic district of the Alban Hills, and making excursions, as

hat black mass, with its strange rope-like folds and slaggy wrinkles,[129] now so well known to every visitor. Accompanied by Professor Guiscardi-one of the most genial and helpful of leaders-Sir Charles made his way to a vent at the base of the principal cone, where the lava was still welling forth from "a small grotto, looking as fluid as water where it first issued, and moving at a pace which you would call rapid in a river. White-hot, at first, in a canal four or five feet broad, then red before it had got on a yard, then in a few feet beginnin

ous expedition, but one which well repaid him by throwing much light on the structure of the volcanic mass. Still he was not yet satisfied, for after he had descended to Zafarana, he returned to spend another night at the Casa degli Inglesi in order to satisfy himself about one or two details. From Zafarana also he went again to the Val del Bove, checking and increasing his notes, and devoted another day to a most interesting excursion through picturesque scenery as far as the

n forty degrees-a fact which had been stoutly denied by advocates of that hypothesis, and was able to offer an explanation of the singular structure of the Val del Bove, viz. that it was a huge gulf, formed by a series of mighty explosions, similar to those which shattered half of the old crater of Vesuvius,[130] and sent one sid

of him to Mrs. Horner, his wife's mother, "Dr. F. at ninety-four looks well enough, but having eaten turtle-soup, and melon too close to the rind, and other imprudences, is not quite well to-day!" O dura Doctorum ilia! The meeting ended, Lyell with some geological friends went off to Elgin to examine the sandstone quarried at Cutties Hillock, near that town. The rock closely resembles the ordinary Old Red Sandstone; it seemed at first sight to form a continuous mass, yet in one place it contained a fossil fish belonging to that period, and in another the remains of a reptile (Telerpeton). After some

determined, for his letters show that, if any objection to the leading principles in his friend's views had still lingere

TNO

on between the fauna and flora of the British Isles and geolo

ers, and Journal

ed November

f Mr. C. Hartung, who was an excellent natu

Geology" (sixth edi

e Parts of Madeira" (Quart.

Street, one in the previous August bearing the superscription of 11, Harley Street, so that he appears (though there is no allusion to thi

r. Bunbury, dated April 3

ongs to the Tertiary e

ters, and Journ

Zwerglithurn, is about one and

in support of the hypothesi

army and returned to England a short time

d: "Volcanoes" (International

famous erupti

volcano

v. and xxvi.). See also a paper on Stony Lava on Steep Slopes of Etna (Proc. Roy. So