42 THE COMING [CH. 



a man of culture, a good classical scholar, a translator 

 and commentator on Dante, and a cryptogamic 

 botanist of some reputation. 



Lyell's mother, an Englishwoman from York- 

 shire, was a person of great force of character ; this 

 she showed when, on coming to Kinnordy, she found 

 drunkenness so prevalent among the lairds of this 

 part of Scotland, as to cause a fear on her part, that 

 her husband might be drawn into the dangerous 

 society : she therefore induced him, when their son 

 Charles was only three months old, to abandon their 

 Scottish home, and settle in the New Forest of 

 Hampshire. Thus it came about that the future 

 geologist, though born in Scotland, became, by 

 education, habits and association, English. 



Charles Lyell's attention was first drawn to 

 geology by seeing the quartz-crystals and chalcedony 

 exposed in the broken chalk-flints, which he, as a boy 

 of ten, used to roll down, in company with his school- 

 fellows, from the walls of Old Sarum. Like Charles 

 Darwin, too, he became an ardent and enthusiastic 

 collector of insects, and grew to be a tall and active 

 young fellow, a keen sportsman, with only one draw- 

 back a weakness of the eyes which troubled him 

 through all his after life. 



It was when at the age of seventeen he went to 

 Oxford and came under the influence of Dr Buckland 

 that Lyell first became deeply engrossed in geology. 



