Welcome from Geologists 359 



than the heart-and-soul manner in whicli he put himself in my place 

 and thought what would be best to do 1 ." 



Within a few days of Darwin's arrival in London we find Lyell 

 writing to Owen as follows : 



"Mrs Lyell and I expect a few friends here on Saturday next, 

 29th [October], to an early tea party at eight o'clock, and it will give 

 us great pleasure if you can join it. Among others you will meet 

 Mr Charles Darwin, whom I believe you have seen, just returned 

 from South America, where he has laboured for zoologists as well as 

 for hammer-bearers. I have also asked your friend Broderip 2 ." It 

 would probably be on this occasion that the services of Owen were 

 secured for the work on the fossil bones sent home by Darwin. 



On November 2nd, we find Lyell introducing Darwin as his guest 

 at the Geological Society Club ; on December 14th, Lyell and Stokes 

 proposed Darwin as a member of the Club ; between that date and 

 May 3rd of the following year, when his election to the Club took 

 place, he was several times dining as a guest. 



On January 4th, 1837, as we have already seen, Darwin was 

 formally admitted to the Geological Society, and on the same evening 

 he read his first paper 3 before the Society, Observations of proofs 

 of recent elevation on the coast of Chili, made during the Survey 

 of H.M.S. "Beagle" commanded by Captain FitzRoy, R,N. By 

 C. Darwin, F.G.S. This paper was preceded by one on the same 

 subject by Mr A. Caldcleugh, and the reading of a letter and other 

 communications from the Foreign Office also relating to the earth- 

 quakes in Chili. 



At the meeting of the Council of the Geological Society on 

 February 1st, Darwin was nominated as a member of the new 

 Council, and he was elected on February 17th. 



The meeting of the Geological Society on April 19th was devoted 

 to the reading by Owen of his paper on Toxodon, perhaps the most 

 remarkable of the fossil mammals found by Darwin in South America ; 

 and at the next meeting, on May 3rd, Darwin himself read A Sketch 

 of the Deposits containing extinct Mammalia in the neighbourhood 

 of the Plata. The next following meeting, on May 17th, was 

 devoted to Darwin's Coral-reef paper, entitled On certain areas of 

 elevation and subsidence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as 

 deduced from the study of Coral Formations. Neither of these 

 three early papers of Darwin were published in the Transactions 

 of the Geological Society, but the minutes of the Council show 



1 L. L. i. p. 275. - The Life of Richard Owen, London, 1894, Vol. i. p. 102. 



3 I have already pointed out that the notes read at the Geological Society on Nov. 18, 

 1835 were extracts made by Sedgwick from letters sent to Henslow, and not a paper sent 

 home for publication by Darwin. 



