Charles Lyell and Modern Geology - Bonney Thomas George

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the end of February he is back in London and at the Geological Society, defending his views on the constancy of Nature's operations – views which seemed rank heresy to the older school, who sought to solve every difficulty by a convulsion, and were fettered in their interpretation of the records of geology by supposed theological necessities. In April Lyell writes thus to Dr. Mantel25: —

      "A splendid meeting [at the Geological Society] last night, Sedgwick in the chair. Conybeare's paper on Valley of the Thames, directed against Messrs. Lyell and Murchison's former paper, was read in part. Buckland present to defend the 'Diluvialists,' as Conybeare styles his sect; and us he terms 'Fluvialists.' Greenough assisted us by making an ultra speech on the importance of modern causes… Murchison and I fought stoutly, and Buckland was very piano. Conybeare's memoir is not strong by any means. He admits three deluges before the Noachian! and Buckland adds God knows how many catastrophes besides; so we have driven them out of the Mosaic record fairly."

      Again, in the month of June, he writes to the same correspondent in regard to the second portion of the same paper26: —

      "The last discharge of Conybeare's artillery, served by the great Oxford engineer against the Fluvialists, as they are pleased to term us, drew upon them on Friday a sharp volley of musketry from all sides, and such a broadside, at the finale, from Sedgwick as was enough to sink the 'Reliquiæ Diluvianæ'27 for ever, and make the second volume shy of venturing out to sea."

      In a third letter, written to Dr. Fleming, he gives a similar account of the battle between the Diluvialists and Fluvialists, and concludes with these words28: —

      "I am preparing a general work on the younger epochs of the earth's history, which I hope to be out with next spring. I begin with Sicily, which has almost entirely risen from the sea, to the height of nearly 4,000 feet, since all the present animals existed in the Mediterranean!"

      CHAPTER IV.

      THE PURPOSE DEVELOPED AND ACCOMPLISHED

      The summer of 1829 was spent at Kinnordy, when the quarries of Kirriemuir and the neighbouring districts were visited from time to time, the workmen being encouraged to look out for the remains of plants and the scales of fishes. Murchison, however, was again travelling on the Continent, and, in company with Sedgwick, was exploring the geological structure of the Eastern Alps and the basin of the Danube. They appear to have kept up communication with Lyell, who hears with satisfaction of the results of their work, since these cannot fail to keep Murchison sound in the Uniformitarian faith and to complete the conversion of Sedgwick.29

      "The latter" (Lyell writes to Dr. Fleming) "was astonished at finding what I had satisfied myself of everywhere, that in the more recent tertiary groups great masses of rock, like the different members of our secondaries, are to be found. They call the grand formation in which they have been working sub-Apennine. Vienna falls into it. I suspect it is a shade older, as the sub-Apennines are several shades older than the Sicilian tertiaries. They have discovered an immensely thick conglomerate, 500 feet of compact marble-like limestone, a great thickness of oolite, not distinguishable from Bath oolite, an upper red sand and conglomerate, etc. etc., all members of that group zoologically sub-Apennine. This is glorious news for me… It chimes in well with making old red transition mountain limestone and coal, and as much more as we can, one epoch, for when Nature sets about building in one place, she makes a great batch there… All the freshwater, marine, and other groups of the Paris basin are one epoch, at the farthest not more separated than the upper and lower chalk."

      A letter to the same correspondent, written nearly three weeks later, at the end of October, and after his return to London, refers to the consequences of this journey.30

      "Sedgwick and Murchison are just returned, the former full of magnificent views. Throws overboard all the diluvian hypothesis; is vexed he ever lost time about such a complete humbug; says he lost two years by having also started a Wernerian. He says primary rocks are not primary, but, as Hutton supposed, some igneous, some altered secondary. Mica schist in Alps lies over organic remains. No rock in the Alps older than lias.31 Much of Buckland's dashing paper on Alps wrong. A formation (marine) found at foot of Alps, between Danube and Rhine, thicker than all the English secondaries united. Munich is in it. Its age probably between chalk and our oldest tertiaries. I have this moment received a note from C. Prévost by Murchison. He has heard with delight and surprise of their Alpine novelties, and, alluding to them and other discoveries, he says: 'Comme nous allons rire de nos vieilles idées! Comme nous allons nous moquer de nous-mêmes!' At the same time he says: 'If in your book you are too hard on us on this side the Channel, we will throw at you some of old Brongniart's "metric and peponary blocks" which float in that general and universal diluvium, and have been there "depuis le grand jour qui a separé, d'une manière si tranchée, les temps ante-des-temps Post-Diluviens."'"

      A short time afterwards, in a letter addressed to Mr. Leonard Horner, Lyell declines to become a candidate for the Professorship of Geology and Mineralogy at the London University,32 which was first opened in the autumn of the previous year. Evidently he considers himself to be too fully occupied, for he writes to Dr. Mantell on December 5th that his book has taken a definite shape.33 "I am bound hand and foot. In the press on Monday next with my work, which Murray is going to publish – 2 vols. – the title, 'Principles of Geology: being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface by Reference to Causes now in Operation.' The first volume will be quite finished by the end of the month. The second is, in a manner, written, but will require great recasting. I start for Iceland by the end of April, so time is precious." The process of incubation was continued throughout the winter. On February 3rd, 1830, he had corrected the press as far as the eightieth page, getting on slowly, but with satisfaction to himself. "How much more difficult it is," he remarks, "to write for general readers than for the scientific world; yet half our savants think that to write popularly would be a condescension to which they might bend if they would." He fully expects that the publication of his book will bring a hornet's nest about his head, but he has determined that, when the first volume is attacked, he will waste no money on pamphleteering, but will work on steadily at the second volume, and then, if the book is a success, at the second edition, for "controversy is interminable work." He felt now that the facts of nature were on his side, and his conclusions right in the main; so, like most strong men, he adopted the same course as did the founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and wrote over the door of his study, "Lat them say."

      The plan of a summer tour in Iceland fell through; so did another for a long journey from St. Petersburg by Moscow to the Sea of Azof, to be followed by an examination of the Crimea and the Great Steppe, and a return up the Danube to Vienna; but by the middle of June the first volume of the "Principles" was nearly finished; and in a letter to Scrope,34 to whom advance sheets of the book had been forwarded, in order that he might review it in the Quarterly, Lyell explains concisely the position which he has taken in regard to cosmology and the earth's history.

      "Probably there was a beginning – it is a metaphysical question, worthy a theologian – probably there will be an end. Species, as you say, have begun and ended – but the analogy is faint and distant. Perhaps it is an analogy, but all I say is, there are, as Hutton said, 'no signs of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' Herschel thought the nebulæ became worlds. Davy said in his last book, 'It is always more probable that the new stars become visible, and then invisible, and pre-existed, than that they are created and extinguished.' So I think. All I ask is, that at any given period of the past, don't stop inquiry when puzzled by refuge to a beginning, which is all one with 'another state of nature,' as it appears to me. But there is no harm in your attacking me, provided you point out that it is the proof I deny, not the probability of a beginning. Mark,

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<p>25</p>

Ibid.

<p>26</p>

Ut suprà, p. 253.

<p>27</p>

"Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, or Observations on Organic Remains contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel, and on other Geological Phenomena attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge." By Professor Buckland. 1823.

<p>28</p>

Ut suprà, p. 254.

<p>29</p>

Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. p. 255.

<p>30</p>

Ut suprà, p. 256.

<p>31</p>

Further work has not verified some of these statements. There can be no question that a great deal of rock in the Alps is much older than even the Trias. The apparent superposition of crystalline schists to rocks with fossils is due to over-folding or over-thrust faulting —i. e. the schists are the older rocks. Though the Secondary rocks of the Alps have undergone, in places, some modification and mineral changes, these are very different from the metamorphism of those crystalline schists which have a stratified origin.

<p>32</p>

Now "University College," London, having been incorporated by Royal Charter under that title in November, 1836.

<p>33</p>

Ut suprà, p. 258.

<p>34</p>

Life, Letters, and Journals, vol. i. pp. 269-271.