2 iHQE/X) THE EARTH 



In one way we are all uniformitarians, i.e., we accept the 

 doctrine of the " uniform action of natural causes," but, as 

 applied to geology, uniformity means more than this. 

 Denned in the briefest fashion it is the geology of Lyell. 

 Hutton had given us a " Theory of the Earth," in its 

 main outlines still faithful and true ; and this Lyell spent 

 his life in illustrating and advocating ; but, as so com- 

 monly happens, the zeal of the disciple outran the wisdom 

 of the master, and mere opinions were insisted on as 

 necessary dogma. What did it matter if Hutton as a 

 result of his inquiries into terrestrial history had declared 

 that he found no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of 

 an end ? It would have been marvellous if he had ! 

 Consider that when Hutton' s "Theory" was published 

 William Smith's famous discovery had not been made, 

 and that nothing was then known of the orderly succession 

 of forms of life, which it is one of the triumphs of geology 

 to have revealed ; consider, too, the existing state of 

 physics at the time, and that the modern theories of 

 energy had still to be formulated ; consider also that 

 spectroscopy had not yet lent its aid to astronomy and 

 the consequent ignorance of the nature of nebulae ; and 

 then, if you will, cast a stone at Hutton. With Lyell, 

 however, the case was different ; in pressing his uniformi- 

 tarian creed upon geology he omitted to take into account 

 the great advances made by its sister sciences, although 

 he had knowledge of them, and thus sinned against the 

 light. In the last edition of the famous "Principles " we 

 read: " It is a favourite dogma of some physicists that 

 not only the earth, but the sun itself, is continually losing 

 a portion of its heat, and that as there is no known source 

 by which it can be restored we can foresee the time when 

 all life will cease to exist on this planet, and on the other 

 hand we can look back to a period when the heat was so 

 intense as to be incompatible with the existence of any 



