Il8 GEOLOGY [Chap. IX 



Letter 481 been a long task. I had, before your return from Scotland, 

 determined to come up and see you ; but as I had nothing 

 else to do in town, my courage has gradually eased off, more 

 especially as I have not been very well lately. We get so 

 many invitations here that we are grown quite dissipated, but 

 my stomach has stood it so ill that we are going to have a 

 month's holidays, and go nowhere. 



The subject which I was most anxious to talk over with 

 you I have settled, and having written sixty pages of my 

 6". American Geology, I am in pretty good heart, and am 

 determined to have very little theory and only short descrip- 



years later. Speaking of this greatest of Lyell's services to Geology, 

 Huxley writes : " I have recently read afresh the first edition of the 

 Principles of Geology, and when I consider that this remarkable book had 

 been nearly thirty years in everybody's hands [in 1859], and that it brings 

 home to any reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great 

 fact — the principle that the past must be explained by the present, unless 

 good cause be shown to the contrary ; and the fact that, so far as our 

 knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can 

 be shown — I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the 

 chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin " (Huxley's Life and Letters, 

 Vol. II., p. 190). As Professor of Geology in King's College, London, 

 Lyell delivered two courses of lectures in 1832-33 ; in the latter year he 

 received a Royal medal, and in 1858 he was the recipient of the Copley 

 medal of the Royal Society. The Elements of Geology was published in 

 1833 ; this work is still used as a text-book, a new edition having been 

 lately (1896) brought out by Prof. Judd ; in 1S45 and in 1849 appeared 

 the Travels in North America and A Second Visit to the United States of 

 North America. The Antiquity of Man was published in 1863. Lyell 

 was knighted in 184S, and in 1864 was raised to the rank of a Baronet. 

 He was buried in Westminster Abbey. 



Darwin wrote in his Autobiography: "The Science of Geology is 

 enormously indebted to Lyell, more so, as I believe, than to any other 

 man who ever lived " {Life and Letters, Vol. I., p. 72). In a letter to 

 Lyell — November 23rd, 1859 — Darwin wrote : " I rejoice profoundly that 

 you intend admitting the doctrine of modification in your new edition 

 [a new edition of the Manual published in 1865] ; nothing, I am con- 

 vinced, could be more important for its success. I honour you most 

 sincerely. To have maintained, in the position of a master, one side of a 

 question for thirty years, and then deliberately give it up, is a fact to 

 which I much doubt whether the records of science offer a parallel " {Life 

 and Letters, Vol. II., pp. 229-30). See Life, Letters, and Journals of 

 Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, 2 Vols., 

 London, 1S81. Charles Lyell and Modern Geology, Prof. T. G. Bonney, 

 London, 1S95. 



