v] OF EVOLUTION 35 



to all the leaders of geological thought in the infant 

 society which they had joined. 



It is interesting to note that each of these two 

 young geologists arrived independently, as the result 

 of their own studies and observations, at their 

 conclusions concerning the futility of the prevailing 

 catastrophic doctrines. This I am able to affirm, not 

 only from their published and unpublished letters, 

 but from frequent conversations I had with them in 

 their later years. 



Scrope, who was slightly the elder of the two 

 friends, spent a considerable time in that wonderful 

 district of France the Auvergne in the year 1821, 

 and though he had not seen the map and later 

 memoirs of Desmarest, he pourtrayed the structure 

 of the country in a series of very striking panoramic 

 views, and was led, independently of the great French 

 observer, to the same conclusions as his concerning 

 the volcanic origin of the basalts and the formation 

 of the valleys by river-action. Scrope was at that 

 time equally ignorant of the views propounded both 

 by Generelli and by Hutton. 



By April 6th, 1822, Scrope had completed his 

 masterly work The Geology and Extinct Volcanoes 

 of Central France, and had despatched it to England. 

 It would be idle to speculate now as to what might 

 have been the effect of that work so full of the 

 results of accurate observation, and so suggestive in 



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