vni] OF EVOLUTION 89 



children, and in the absence of any suggestion of 

 * selection,' it did not appeal strongly to thinkers on 

 this question. 



Lyell first became acquainted with the writings 

 of Lamarck in 1827. As he was returning from the 

 Oxford circuit for the last time having now resolved 

 to give up law and devote himself to geological work 

 exclusively he wrote to his friend Mantell as 

 follows : 



'I devoured Lamarck en voyage his theories delighted me 



more than any novel I ever read, and much in the same way, for 

 they address themselves to the imagination, at least of geologists 

 who know the mighty inferences which would be deducible were 

 they established by observations. But though I admire even his 

 flights, and feel none of the odium theologicum which some 

 modern writers in this country have visited him with, I confess I 

 read him rather as I hear an advocate on the wrong side, to know 

 what can be made of the case in good hands. I am glad he has 

 been courageous enough and logical enough to admit that his 

 argument, if pushed as far as it must go, if worth anything, would 

 prove that men may have come from the Ourang-Outang. But 

 after all, what changes species may really undergo ! How 

 impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, beyond 

 which some of the so-called extinct species have never passed 

 into recent ones. That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, 

 has long been my creed, and I will try before six months are over 

 to convert the readers of the Quarterly to that heterodox 

 opinion 87 .' 



Lyell was at that time at work on his review for 

 the Quarterly of Scrope's Central France, and was 



