334 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



of advertising is a thousand dollars reward for 

 anyone who will prove that the bones of his Mis- 

 sourium are made of wood. He is soon to take 

 them to London, when you will have a treat, and 

 see a larger femur (thigh-bone) than that of Igua- 

 nodon." He was delighted with the Americans. 



Lyell revisited America in 1845, and on return- 

 ing across the Atlantic in 1846, narrowly escaped 

 shipwreck on an iceberg ; but he made an interest- 

 ing observation about one great berg. " It had a 

 large rock, twelve feet square, on the top, and 

 much gravel and sand on its side. The bergs 

 were from fifty to four hundred feet in height, 

 pyramidal, pinnacled, dome-shaped, single-peaked, 

 double-peaked, flat-topped, and of every form and 

 most picturesque, and only a quarter of a mile 

 off us." 



The lesson was not lost, for Lyell had thus 

 ocular proof concerning how stones of huge size and 

 gravity, can travel far from their proper location. 

 And as these icebergs capsize or melt he was con- 

 firmed in his views that many deposits of huge 

 stones and gravels in the form of '' drift" have been 

 produced in this manner. 



Having now attained great eminence, Lyell 

 began to write and agitate about the scientific 

 teaching of the Universities, and his opinion of the 

 decidedly unprogressive character of them was 

 proved to be correct when only four heads of 

 houses out of twenty-four were at Oxford to re- 

 ceive the British Association for the Advancement 



