516 SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



was founded. This, like other modern scientific societies, was devoted 

 to the Baconian cultivation of science, or to furnishing a broad inductive 

 basis for the future constitution of geology, and was priucii)led against 

 the premature speculation of the middle principles and explanations 

 of the science. In this society no discussions of " theories of the 

 earth " were in order. 



But there already existed a body of facts in the current physical 

 history of the globe, bearing on questions of origin, which needed only 

 to be revised and augmented to serve for subsequent legitimate deduc- 

 tions in geoloiiy. The genius of Lyell was first turned to this field of 

 research; and in the year 1832 the first fruits of his labor appeared in 

 the earliest edition of his " Principles of Geology." Eleven editions 

 of this work have been published, the last in 1872. In 1836-37, Lyell 

 was chosen President of the Geological Society. A few years later, 

 1841-42, he visited the United States for geological observations ; and 

 again for social as well as geological studies in 1845-46. Narratives 

 of these visits were soon afterwards published by him. He was again 

 made President of the Geological Society in 1850-51. 



Notwithstanding Lyell's early and clear perception of true method 

 in natural science, he was by no means free at first, nor for a long time, 

 from surviving conceptions of scholastic speculation, especially in his 

 treatment of the biological division of geology ; and he shared in the 

 reaction, which extended to nearly every department of thought, of 

 the present century against the freedom of speculation in the eighteenth. 

 Deference to the high authority of Linnajus and Cuvier in the sys- 

 tematic sciences of natural liistoiy made him accept, as warranted by 

 their observations, the doctrine of the immutability of species, which 

 as a positive doctrine they had really derived implicitly from the scho- 

 lastic meaning of the term species. His opposition to the transmuta- 

 tion theory of Lamarck was distinguished, however, from that of most 

 of its opponents by a fair and judicial consideration of the arguments. 

 But real and positive evidence on this subject had during a half cen- 

 tury slowly accumulated; and many merely negative facts, defaults of 

 evidence, which had been positively construed in accordance with 

 current scholastic conceptions, were giving place to facts of a Baconian 

 force and validity ; and Lyell was foremost among the opponents of 

 the transmutation theory to appreciate their significance. His treatise 

 on '"The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks 

 on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation," appeared in 1863, 

 four years after the first edition of Darwin's "Origin of Species." 

 Three years later, in 1866, in the tenth edition of his " Principles," a 



