CHAPTER VT. 



THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO LYELL 



AND DARWIN. 



Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. — His Natural History of the Earth't- 

 Development. — Origin of the Greatest Effects through the Multiplication 

 of the Smallest Causes. — Unlimited Extent of Geological Periods. — 

 Lyell's Eefutation of Cuvier's History of Creation. — The Establishment 

 of the Uninterrupted Connection of Historical Development by Lyell 

 and Darwin. — Biographical Notice of Charles Darwin. — His Scientific 

 Works. — His Theory of Coral Reefs. — Development of the Theory of 

 Selection. — A Letter of Darwin's. — The Contemporaneous Appearance 

 of Darwin's and Alfred Wallace's Theory of Selection. — Darwin's Study 

 of Domestic Animals and Cultivated Plants. — Andreas Wagner's notions 

 as to the Special Creation of Cultivated Organisms for the good of 

 Man. — The Tree of Knowledge in Paradise. — Comparison between Wild 

 and Cultivated Organisms. — Darwin's Study of Domestic Pigeons. — 

 Importance of Pigeon Breeding.— Common Descent of all Kaces of 

 Pigeons. 



During the thirty years, from 1830 until 1859, when 

 Darwin's work appeared, the ideas of creation introduced 

 by Cuvier remained predominant in the sciences of organic 

 nature. People rested satisfied with the unscientific assump- 

 tion, that in the course of the earth's history, a series of 

 inexplicable revolutions had periodically annihilated the 

 whole world of animals and plants, and that at the end of 

 each revolution, and the beginning of a new period, a new 



