T. G. Bonney

“ A geologist who has been trained among the scenery of Britain finds his first view of the Alps to be the beginning of a new chapter in the Book of Nature, but a visit to America more like the beginning of a new volume. There almost everything is on a colossal scale—rivers, lakes, forests, prairies, distances, such as cannot be matched, at any rate in the more accessible parts of Europe. ”

“ The outbursts of denunciation aroused by the assertion of the antiquity of man and the publication of the "Origin of Species," which many still in the full vigour of their powers can well remember, were but a recrudescence of the same spirit, a reappearance of an old foe with a new face.
But when Lyell was young and the idea of the "Principles" began to germinate in his mind, popular prejudice against the free exercise of inquiry in geology was still strong; this diluvial hypothesis still hampered, if it did not fully satisfy, the majority of scientific workers. ”

“ Partly from this, partly from other causes, the importance, nay, the absolute necessity of travel, for the education of a geologist is now too often forgotten. In this science there are many questions—some of them almost fundamental—for which no perquisitions in a library, no research in a laboratory, no studies in a museum, however conscientiously patient and painstaking they may be, can be accepted as an adequate preparation; questions in which Nature is at once the best book, the best laboratory, and the best museum, and experience is the only safe teacher. ”

“ Now if species come in in succession, such contrivances must sometimes be made, and such relations predetermined between species, as the Mantis for example, and plants not then existing, but which it was foreseen would exist together with some particular climate at a given time. But I cannot do justice to this train of speculation in a letter, and will only say that it seems to me to offer a more beautiful subject for reasoning and reflecting on, than the notion of great batches of species all coming in, and afterwards going out at once. ”

“ In order to study volcanoes still in activity, he had climbed Vesuvius and Etna; in order to scrutinise more minutely the structure of cones, craters, and lava streams, he had visited Auvergne, Catalonia, and the Eifel; while in all his goings and comings through scenes where Nature worked more unobtrusively, he had watched her never-ending toil, as she destroyed with the one hand and built with the other. ”

“ As in such cases the glib tongue would become more potent than the voice of reason, the demagogue than the statesman, he feared that the standard of national honour would be almost inevitably lowered, and national disaster be a probable result. That all men are equal and entitled to an equal share in the government—a dogma now regarded in some circles as almost sacred—would have been repudiated by him with the quiet scorn of a man who prefers facts to fancies, and inductive reasoning to sentimental rhapsody. ”

“ He could feel the allurement of expectation or the joy of discovery even in countries otherwise well known; where now he can hope only to pick up some tiny detail or to plunge into some interminable controversy. If he now desires "fresh fields and pastures new," he must wander beyond the limits of civilised lands; for within these every crag is hammer-marked, and the official geologist is at work making maps. But not only this, Lyell lived in the days when the literature of his science was of very modest dimensions. ”

“ But Sedgwick, great man as he was, almost unrivalled in the field, more brilliant, though less persevering than Lyell, was not always quite free from prejudices; and it may be noted that he more than once stigmatises an opinion which he dislikes by declaring it not to be in accordance with inductive methods. Sir Joseph Hooker's judgment was far more accurate: "One of the most philosophical of geologists, and one of the best of men" [167] ; or that of Charles Darwin himself: "The science of geology is enormously indebted to Lyell—more so, as I believe, than to any other man who ever lived." ”

“ Is it credible that the Author of Nature should have founded the world upon such laws as that the dry land should be for ever growing smaller, and at last become wholly submerged beneath the waters? Is it credible that, amid so many created things, the mountains alone should daily diminish in number and bulk, without there being any repair of their losses? ”

“ It is almost inevitable that the discoverer or prophet of a great truth, who has to encounter the storm and stress of controversy, should state his case a little too strongly, or should overlook some minor limitation. Suppose we grant that Lyell was a little too lavish in his estimate of the time at the disposal of geologists. The physicist had not then intervened, with arguments drawn from his own science, to insist that neither earth nor sun can reckon their years by myriads of myriads, and even now this controversy cannot be regarded as closed. ”

“ Leonard Lyell.
By such conscientious and unremitting labour, the scientific value of the "Principles" was immensely increased; it kept always in step with the advance of the science, but at the same time it lost, as was inevitable, a little of that literary charm and that sense of freshness which was at first so marked a characteristic. Books, like children, are apt to lose some of their beauty as they increase in size and strength. ”

“ Lyell had perceived that little real progress could be made till geologists were free to look facts in the face and to follow their guidance to whatever conclusions these might lead, irrespective of supposed consequences; or that, in other words, questions of science must be settled by inductive reasoning from accurate observations, and not by an appeal to the opinions of the men of olden time, however great might be the sanctity of their characters or the honour due to their memories. ”

“ It proved the writer to be not only a careful observer and a reasoner of exceptional inductive power, but also a man of general culture and a master of his mother tongue. The book, moreover, marked an epoch in geology not less important; it produced an influence on the science greater and more permanent than any work which had been previously written, or has since appeared—greater even than the famous "Origin of Species by Natural Selection," for that dealt only with one portion of geology—viz. with palæontology, while the method of the Principles affected the science in every part. ”

“ This burden of scientific literature, seeing that life is short and human strength is limited, threatens to stifle the progress of science itself, and we can hardly venture to expect that any more great generalisations will be made in geology or palæontology, unless a man arise who is daring enough to subordinate reading to thinking, and so strong in his grasp of principles that he can make light of details. ”

“ Early in October Charles Darwin, for whose return from his noted voyage on the Beagle Lyell had more than once expressed an earnest desire, arrived in England, bringing with him a large collection of specimens and almost innumerable facts, geological and biological, the fruits of his travels. The biological observations slowly ripened in Darwin's mind till they had for their final result the "Origin of Species." The geological stirred Lyell to immediate enthusiasm, for they afforded a valuable support to some of the ideas which he had put forward to the "Principles." ”

“ When speculations on the long series of events which occurred in the Glacial and post-Glacial periods are indulged in, the imagination is apt to take alarm at the immensity of the time required to interpret the monuments of these ages, all referable to the era of existing species. In order to abridge the number of centuries which would otherwise be indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to magnify the rate of change in prehistoric times, by investing the causes which have modified the animate and inanimate world with extraordinary and excessive energy. ”

“ Ecclesiastics scolded; well-meaning though incompetent laymen echoed their cry; the more timorous among scientific men wasted their time in devising elaborate but futile schemes of accommodation between the discoveries of geology and the supposed revelations of the Scriptures; the stronger laboured on patiently, gathering evidence, strengthening their arguments and dissecting the fallacies by which they were assailed, until the popular prejudice should be allayed and men be calm enough to listen to the voice of truth. ”

“ As a rule, we let science and literature be their own reward, and, as an exception, confer the same distinction on a man who has won a world-wide reputation (provided he is fairly rich) and on an opulent tradesman who is accidently prominent on some auspicious occasion, or is a local wirepuller in party politics. Lyell went over from Kinnordy to Balmoral to receive the intended honour, and had, as he writes, "a most agreeable geological exploring on the banks of the Dee, into which Prince Albert entered with much spirit." ”

“ Though many men on reaching their sixty-third year are content to rest upon their oars and not to attempt new ventures, Lyell had plunged into a question which was arousing almost as much excitement as the origin of species—namely, the antiquity of man. It was a question, indeed, which for a long time must have been before his mind—witness his remarks on Dr. Schmerling's work in the caves near Liége; but it had assumed a special significance owing to the famous discovery of flint implements in the valley of the Somme. ”

“ After a few days' halt at Boston, they moved on to Newhaven, where Professor Silliman showed him dykes and intrusive sheets of columnar greenstone altering red sandstone, their general appearance and association recalling Salisbury Crags and other familiar sections near Edinburgh. In this district Lyell found the grasshoppers as numerous and as noisy as in Italy, watched the fireflies sparkling in the darkness, and had his first sight of a humming-bird, and of a wildflower hardly less gorgeous, the scarlet lobelia. ”

“ Streams of lava, still rough and clinkery, have poured themselves over the plateau and have run down the valleys till they have reached the plain of the Allier, while huge fragments of flows far larger and more ancient have been carved by the action of rain and rivers into natural bastions, and now may be seen resting upon stratified marls, crowded with freshwater shells and other organisms,—the remnants of deposits accumulated in great lakes, which had been already drained in ages long before man appeared on the earth. ”

“ Some of the naturalists have "got their heads too full of politics"; others are forced to work as literary hacks in order to live. "Books on natural history and medicine have no sale; there is a demand only for political pamphlets." So Lyell enters into an engagement with Deshayes, who, like so many others, has to live by his pen lest he should starve by science, for "a private course of fossil conchology," and for two months' work after Lyell has returned to England, to be spent in tabulating the species of Tertiary shells in his own (Deshayes') and the other great collections of Paris. ”

“ In deluges, the favourite resort of every "catastrophic" geologist, Lyell had long lost faith, and he laughs in one of his letters at the idea of a French geologist, that a sudden upheaval of South America [Pg 50] may have been the cause of the Noachian flood. To the breaks in the succession of strata, a fact upon which the catastrophists much relied, he attached comparatively little value, insisting on their more or less local character. ”

“ De Charpentier, Escher von der Linth, and other local geologists, had been for some time asserting that the glaciers of the Alps, at no remote epoch in geological history, had attained to an enormous size, had buried the Swiss lowland and covered it with morainic deposits, and had even welled up high against the flanks of the Jura, where the huge blocks of protogine from the Mont Blanc range—such as Pierre à bot and its companion erratics, full 800 feet above the Lake of Neuchâtel—indicated one position of its terminal moraine. ”

“ Evidently the geology proved interesting, as well it might, for here Nature presents a volume of her geological history, that of the Secondary era, with only the opening and the concluding chapters, all the record from the early part of the Lias to the beginning of the Cretaceous having been torn out. The dark-tinted greensand, changing almost immediately into the pure white chalk, often presents curious colour-contrasts in a single section; while the classification of the several deposits offered a problem at which probably Lyell thought it wiser to "look and pass on." ”

“ 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 manifest to more than one mind, either about the same time or successively, without communication. I believe laws discover themselves to individuals, and not that individuals discover laws. ”

“ Throughout our early education we have been accustomed to such strict economy in all that relates to the chronology of the earth and its inhabitants in remote ages, so fettered have we been by [Pg 192] old traditional beliefs, that even when our reason is convinced and we are persuaded that we ought to make more liberal grants of time to the geologist, we feel how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of our bones. ”

“ Doubtless there is hardly any better foundation for geology than a course of mathematics; at the same time, classical studies did much to give Lyell his lucidity and elegance of style, and thus to ensure the success of the "Principles of Geology." ”