H8 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



he wrote with an open mind, not being, as Herbert 

 Spencer says of Hugh Miller, " a theologian study- 

 ing geology." Following the theories of uniformity 

 of action laid down by Hutton, by Buffon, and by 

 that industrious surveyor, William Smith, who trav- 

 elled the length and breadth of England, mapping 

 out the sequence of the rocks, and tabulating the 

 fossils special to each stratum, Lyell demonstrated 

 in detail that the formation and features of the earth's 

 crust are explained by the operation of causes still 

 active. He was one among others, each working 

 independently at different branches of research; 

 each, unwittingly, collecting evidence which would 

 help to demolish old ideas, and support new theories. 

 A year after the Principles of Geology appeared, 

 there crept unnoticed into the world a treatise, by 

 one Patrick Matthew, on Naval Timber and Arbori- 

 culture, under which unexciting title Darwin's theory 

 was anticipated. Of this, however, as of a still earlier 

 anticipation, more presently. About this period Von 

 Baer, in examining the embryos of animals, showed 

 that creatures so unlike one another in their adult 

 state as fishes, lizards, lions, and men, resemble one 

 another so closely in the earlier stages of their de- 

 velopment that no differences can be detected be- 

 tween them. But Von Baer was himself anticipated 

 by Meckel, who wrote as follows in 1811 : " There is 

 no good physiologist who has not been struck, in- 

 cidentally, by the observation that the original form 

 of all organisms is one and the same, and that out 



