44 THE COMING [CH 



to fields in a boulder-clay country separated by gorse 

 ('whin ') hedges (' dykes '). 



Buckland, as shown by his Vindiciae Geological 

 (1820) and his Bridgewater Treatise (1836), was the 

 most uncompromising of the advocates for making all 

 geological teaching subordinate to the literal inter- 

 pretation of the early chapters of Genesis ; and in 

 his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) he stoutly maintained 

 the view that all the superficial deposits of the globe 

 were the result of the Noachian deluge ! He was 

 indeed the great leader of the Catastrophists, and it 

 is not surprising to find Lyell, while still under his 

 influence, scoffing at ' the Huttonians 3 V 



That Buckland greatly influenced Lyell in his 

 youth, especially by inoculating him with his splendid 

 enthusiasm for geology, there can be no doubt ; and 

 Lyell, far as he departed in after life from the views 

 of his teacher, never forgot his indebtedness to the 

 Oxford professor. Even in 1832, in publishing the 

 second edition of the first volume of his Principles, he 

 dedicated it to Buckland, as one ' who first instructed 

 me in the elements of geology, and by whose energy 

 and talents the cultivation of science in the country 

 has been so eminently promoted 33 .' 



On leaving Oxford in 1819, at the age of twenty- 

 two, Lyell joined the Geological Society. What were 

 the dominant opinions at that time on geological 

 theory among the distinguished men, who were there 



