No. 1.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 13 



hold his pre-eminence down to the end of his life, and through 

 all the great changes which occurred in the rapid development 

 of the science. For nearly 45 years, his works have been the 

 text-books of geologists, and though the great impetus which 

 they primarily gave has thrown the study of the earth forward 

 into an entirely new position : — the last editions of the Elements 

 and Principles are still in the van of the science. 



The position which he thus occupied is one to which he was 

 in every way justly entitled. His large and judicial mind had 

 always a clear perception of the true method of natural history. 

 He saw that the foundations of our knowledge of geology were 

 to be laid in extensive and accurate collections of facts, and in 

 reasoning on these by severely inductive methods. This idea 

 he carried out in his Elements of Geology. But in his Prin- 

 ciples he opened up a new field, not as has been crudely conceived 

 by some commentators on his work, one of the nature of deduc- 

 tion as distinguished from induction, but rather another induc- 

 tive investigation, leading to general conclusions as to the 

 changes now in progress, in order that by a fair use of analogy 

 a key might be found to the interpretation of the facts and con^ 

 elusions obtained by the study of the geological monuments of 

 past ages. He has himself well stated this view of the case in 

 the preface to the tenth edition of the Principles. 



Viewed in this way, the Lyellian Geology rests on two induc- 

 tive bases — the first relating to the facts discoverable in the 

 earth's crust, and the second to the changes now in progress 

 under our observation — and the connection of these by an analogy 

 founded on identity of causes or conditions and identity of effects. 

 This mode of treating the history of the earth was especially 

 that of Lyell, and it was this that constituted his greatest con- 

 tribution to the growth of modern geology. 



Injustice has been done to the Lyellean method by two mis- 

 conceptions, propagated perhaps by injudicious friends rather 

 than by opponents, and which have arisen from a failure to enter 

 into the grand comprehensive views of this great reasoner. 



One of these is the representation that Lyell was thoroughly 

 uniformitarian, in the sense of maintaining that similar changes 

 had been taking place throughout all geological time. It is 

 true that he objected to any explanation of geological changes 

 by imaginary cataclysms not warranted by observation of simi- 

 lar facts ; but no one was more ready than he to receive any 



