At the Geological Society 357 



after a stormy and troublous career, he retired from the society 

 in 1832. In all the writings of the great pioneers in English geology, 

 Button and his splendid generalisation are scarcely ever referred to. 

 The great doctrines of Uniformitarianism, which he had foreshadowed, 

 were completely ignored, and only his extravagances of "anti- 

 Wernerianism " seem to have been remembered. 



When between 1830 and 1832, Lyell, taking up the almost for- 

 gotten ideas of Hutton, von Hoff and Prevost, published that bold 

 challenge to the Catastrophists the Principles of Geology he was 

 met with the strongest opposition, not only from the outside world, 

 which was amused by his "absurdities" and shocked by his "im- 

 piety" but not less from his fellow-workers and friends in the 

 Geological Society. For Lyell's numerous original observations, and 

 his diligent collection of facts his contemporaries had nothing but 

 admiration, and they cheerfully admitted him to the highest offices 

 in the society, but they met his reasonings on geological theory 

 with vehement opposition and his conclusions with coldness and 

 contempt. 



There is, indeed, a very striking parallelism between the recep- 

 tion of the Principles of Geology by Lyell's contemporaries and the 

 manner in which the Origin of Species was met a quarter of a 

 century later, as is so vividly described by Huxley 1 . Among Lyell's 

 fellow-geologists, two only G. Poulett Scrope and John Herschel 2 

 declared themselves from the first his strong supporters. Scrope in 

 two luminous articles in the Quarterly Review did for Lyell what 

 Huxley accomplished for Darwin in his famous review in the Times ; 

 but Scrope unfortunately was at that time immersed in the stormy 

 sea of politics, and devoted his great powers of exposition to the 

 preparation of fugitive pamphlets. Herschel, like Scrope, was un- 

 able to support Lyell at the Geological Society, owing to his absence 

 on the important astronomical mission to the Cape. 



It thus came about that, in the frequent conflicts of opinion 

 within the walls of the Geological Society, Lyell had to bear the 

 brunt of battle for Uniformitarianism quite alone, and it is to be 



1 L. L. n. pp. 179204. 



2 Both Lyell and Darwin fully realised the value of the support of these two friends. 

 Scrope in his appreciative reviews of the Principles justly pointed out what was the 

 weakest point, the inadequate recognition of sub-aerial as compared with marine 

 denudation. Darwin also admitted that Scrope had to a great extent forestalled him 

 in his theory of Foliation. Herschel from the first insisted that the leading idea of 

 the Principles must be applied to organic as well as to inorganic nature and must explain 

 the appearance of new species (see Lyell's Life and Letters, Vol. i. p. 467). Darwin tells 

 us that Herschel's Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy with Humboldt's 

 Personal Narrative "stirred up in me a burning zeal" in his undergraduate days. I once 

 heard Lyell exclaim with fervour "If ever there was a heaven-born genius it waa 

 John Herschel ! " 



