The Fight for Uniformitarianism 361 



law, Leonard Horner, wrote a very lively account of the pro- 

 ceedings while his impressions were still fresh ; and this gives us an 

 excellent idea of the character of these discussions. 



Neither Sedgwick nor Buckland were present on this occasion, 

 but we can imagine how they would have chastised their two " erring 

 pupils" — more in sorrow than in anger — had they been there. 

 Greenough, too, was absent — possibly unwilling to countenance even 

 by his presence such outrageous doctrines. 



Darwin, after describing the great earthquakes which he had 

 experienced in South America, and the evidence of their connection 

 with volcanic outbursts, proceeded to show that earthquakes originated 

 in fractures, gradually formed in the earth's crust, and were ac- 

 companied by movements of the land on either side of the fracture. 

 In conclusion he boldly advanced the view " that continental eleva- 

 tions, and the action of volcanoes, are phenomena now in progress, 

 caused by some great but slow change in the interior of the earth ; 

 and, therefore, that it might be anticipated, that the formation of 

 mountain chains is likewise in progress : and at a rate which may 

 be judged of by either actions, but most clearly by the growth of 

 volcanoes 1 ." 



Ly ell's account 2 of the discussion was as follows : "In support of 

 my heretical notions," Darwin " opened upon De la Beche, Phillips 

 and others his whole battery of the earthquakes and volcanos of the 

 Andes, and argued that spaces at least a thousand miles long were 

 simultaneously subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and 

 that the elevation of the Pampas, Patagonia, &c, all depended on 

 a common cause ; also that the greater the contortions of strata in 

 a mountain chain, the smaller must have been each separate and 

 individual movement of that long series which was necessary to 

 upheave the chain. Had they been more violent, he contended that 

 the subterraneous fluid matter would have gushed out and over- 

 flowed, and the strata would have been blown up and annihilated 3 . 

 He therefore introduces a cooling of one small underground injection, 

 and then the pumping in of other lava, or porphyry, or granite, into 

 the previously consolidated and first-formed mass of igneous rock 4 . 

 When he had done his description of the reiterated strokes of his 

 volcanic pump, De la Beche gave us a long oration about the impossi- 

 bility of strata of the Alps, &c, remaining flexible for such a time as 



1 Proc. Geol. Soc. Vol. n. pp. 654—60. 



2 Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs 

 Lyell, Vol. n. pp. 40, 41 (Letter to Leonard Horner, 1838), 2 vols. London, 1881. 



3 It is interesting to compare this with what Darwin wrote to Henslow seven years 

 earlier, see p. 344. 



4 Ideas somewhat similar to this suggestion have recently been revived by Dr See 

 {Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. Vol. xlvii. 1908, p. 262). 



