LYELL, CHARLES. 



MAINE. 



wMch he presented in "Travels in North 

 America in the Years 1841-'42 " (2 vols., Lon- 

 don, 1845). In 1845 he paid a second visit to 

 the 'United States, traveling chiefly through 

 the South, which he described in the work, 

 " A Second Visit to the United States " (2 vols., 

 London, 1849). His next visit to the United 

 States, in 1852, was of too short duration to be 

 of any importance. In the following year he 

 was appointed on the British Commission to 

 the Industrial Exhibition in New York. He 

 also wrote " Geological Evidences of the An- 

 tiquity of Man " (London, 1863). He was 

 elected President of the Geological Society in 

 1836, and again in 1850 ; was knighted in 1848 ; 

 created a baronet in 1864, and in 1855 received 

 the degree of D. 0. L. from Oxford. The fol- 

 lowing extracts from an article of the eminent 

 geologist, Prof. B. von Cotta, in the Leipsic 

 Illustrirte Zeitung, of March 20, 1875, refer to 

 the merits of Lyell in behalf of geological sci* 

 ence: 



In the early part of the century a bitter struggle 

 was going on between the Naptunists and the Vol- 

 canists. When Lyell entered upon the scene the 

 victory had been decided in favor of the latter, par- 

 ticularly as far as they maintained the difference be- 

 tween volcanic and Plutonic as put forth by Hutton. 

 But all parties were still governed by many pre- 

 judices, as they regarded the prehistoric world as 

 an epoch completely finished and independent of all 

 others, for which an entirely different measure of the 

 forces of Nature and their effects was to be applied 

 from that observed at present. In consequence the 

 most extravagant hypotheses were brought forward. 

 Sudden and terrible floods were supposed to have 

 devastated large areas ; bigh mountains and entire 

 mountain-ranges were said to have been created by 

 momentary risings, erratic blocks were thougbt to 

 have been scattered by the explosion of gases, and 

 climatic changes to have occurred without any known 

 cause. Some attempted to account for these pre- 

 comets to have crossed 



the earth's orbit, and caused a divergence of its axis. 

 The prehistoric times were divided into different 

 periods, each one of which was supposed to repre- 

 sent a creation to a certain degree independent, and 

 wbicb were separated from each other by terrible 

 catastrophes, destroying everything in existence at 

 the time. It was Charles Lyell wbo first successfully 

 opposed this violent geological method, after a simi- 

 lar attempt of Von Hoff, in Germany, bad remained 

 almost entirely unnoticed. Lyell showed that the 

 causes now at work sufficed to explain the inner and 

 outer construction of the eartb, provided that they 

 repeated themselves often enough in unmeasurably 

 large spaces of time, and their results were added 

 togetber ; that is, he put in place of unaccountable 

 forces, unmeasured time. Tbis new theory, although 

 bitterly opposed at first, gained ground with sur- 



prising rapidity, and is at present accepted with its 

 more general features by all geologists of note. This 

 theory was in decided opposition to the geological 

 doctrines prevailing at that time. It was clearly 

 connected with the theories of Darwin, who, as a 

 geologist, himself a pupil of Lyell, explains the crea- 

 tion of organic species by a slow transformation. 

 Lyell' s new theory was supported by a number of 

 special observations and inferences made from them, 

 of which a few are brought forward as examples. 

 The advocates of the theory of " elevation craters " 

 alleged, in support of their hypothesis, that streams 

 of lava could never congeal into a solid, compact 

 mass on hills having an inclination of more than 

 5. Consequently, whenever they found, in a vol- 

 canic mountain, sheets of stony materials inclined 

 at greater angles than these, they thought themselves 

 warranted in assuming that such rocks had been 

 originally horizontal or very slightly inclined, and 

 had acquired their high inclination by subsequent 

 upheaval. To a certain class of mountains exhibit- 

 ing such formations they gave the name of " eleva- 

 tion craters." Lyell, however, showed that at 

 Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and on the Canary Isl- 

 ands, lava had flowed down slopes of an inclination 

 of 45, and had nevertheless solidified compactly. 

 He also pointed out that these so-called elevation 

 craters were in most cases the truncated remains of 

 cones of eruption, which had been thrown up by 

 paroxysmal explosions. The gradual retreat of the 

 Niagara Falls up the stream, producing in the course 

 of ages the gorge between the Falls and Queenstown, 

 already clearly proved and verified by careful per- 

 sonal examination, served him as a good example of 

 the manner in which deep and broad ravines are 

 formed by the slow action of running water. From 

 a careful study of the tertiary formations and their 

 petrefactions,* in France, Belgium, and England, 

 Lyell reached the conclusion that in the oldest 

 strata of these formations the remains of mollusca 

 of extinct and still existing species occur in unequal 

 numbers, and that, goinef from the lowest strata up- 

 ward, the ratio of the existing species to the extinct 

 constantly increases ; that is to say, that in the lowest, 

 and consequently the oldest, of these strata are found 

 almost exclusively the remains of extinct species, 

 while the centre strata contain living and extinct in 

 almost equal ratios, and the highest, that is. the 

 latest, strata have almost exclusively fossils or still 

 existing species. This important fact he used as a 

 basis for the classification of the tertiary formations 

 in general, according to the approximate number of 

 existing or extinct species found in them, into three 

 divisions or formations, which he called Eocene, 

 Miocene, and Pliocene. This division has since then 

 been accepted by all geologists, and has been in many 

 instances, supplemented. It was, however, another 

 striking illustration of his theory of the gradual and 

 not the spontaneous geological changes of the earth. 

 In his last work on the " Antiquity "of Man," Lyell 

 gave numerous proofs that human life has extended 

 much farther back than was generally supposed. 

 These researches are also closely connected with 

 Darwin's theory of the origin of the organic species 

 and of man. 



M 



MAINE. The fifty-fourth annual session of 

 the Maine Legislature began at Augusta on 

 the 6th of January, and came to a close on the 

 24th of February. The acts of a public char- 

 acter were few, and for the most part unim- 

 portant. Among those worthy of mention 

 was a compulsory-education act, requiring par- 



ents and guardians, and others having control 

 of children between the ages of nine and fifteen 

 years, to send them to a public school at least 

 twelve weeks in each year, unless excused by 

 the school-officers of the town on account of 

 the mental or physical disability of such chil- 

 dren, or unless taught at home or in private 



