v] OF EVOLUTION 47 



in character as the materials of the older geological 

 formations and containing the stems and fruits of the 

 freshwater plant Chara (Stone wort). 



With the help of Robert Brown the botanist, and 

 of analyses made by Daubeny, with the advice of his 

 life-long friend, Faraday, Lyell was able to demon- 

 strate that from the waters of the Forfarshire lakes, 

 containing the most minute proportions of calcareous 

 salts, a limestone, identical in all respects with those 

 of the older rocks of the globe, had been deposited, 

 with excessive slowness, by the action of plant-life 37 . 

 He was thus enabled to supply a complete refutation 

 of the views put forward by Buckland and Cuvier. 



Thus while Button had been led to his conclusion 

 concerning evolution in the inorganic world, by 

 studying the waste going on in the weathered crags 

 and the flooded rivers of his native land, LyelTs 

 conversion to the same views was mainly brought 

 about by the study of changes due to the action of 

 the sea along the English coasts, and by studying the 

 evidence of constant, though slow, deposition of lime- 

 stone-rocks, by the seemingly most insignificant of 

 agencies. 



Lyell however did not by any means neglect the 

 study of the action of rain and rivers. During his 

 visits to Forfarshire, he had his initials and the date 

 cut by a mason on many portions of the rocky river- 

 beds about his home. Fifty years afterwards (in 



