Original Members 15 



in 1817, where he took a leading part in Whig politics and in educa- 

 tional reform, especially among the working classes ; but in 1827 he 

 returned to London to organize the London Institution, and next 

 year became Warden of the newly established University of London. 

 But a failure of health compelled him to resign and live for a time 

 at Bonn. On his return he was appointed a Commissioner to 

 enquire into the employment of children in factories and the chief 

 inspector under the Factory Act, from which he retired in 1856 

 and died in London, March 5th, 1864. He wrote much on both 

 educational and geological subjects, one of the most important 

 of his investigations being an attempt to estimate by borings 

 the rate of accumulation in the Nile delta. 



SIR CHARLES LYELL, a truly philosophic geologist, was born 

 on Xov. I4th, 1797, the son of a Forfarshire laird, himself noted 

 as a botanist and a Dante scholar. Charles, however, was brought 

 up in England, whither his parents migrated, going in due course 

 to Oxford, where Buckland attracted him to Geology. He graduated 

 in 1819 with a second class in Classics, after having travelled in 

 his vacations on the Continent, where he saw the effects of the 

 flood caused by the burst barrier of the Gietroz Glacier, and in the 

 western part of Scotland. He then entered at Lincoln's Inn, but was 

 obliged by a weakness of the eyes to desist from study, went to Rome, 

 and on his return worked at geology in the southern part of England, 

 reading his first paper to the Geological Society in February 1824. 

 This was followed by longer excursions to Cornwall, the north of 

 Scotland and Paris, till after four years' rest his eyes improved, he 

 was called to the Bar, and got some business. About 1827 the 

 ideas began to germinate which were afterwards worked out in the 

 Principles of Geology, and he set off next year for a long continental 

 tour, with the Murchisons (page 16), through Auvergne, Southern 

 France, and Northern Italy. Parting from his companions, Lyell 

 w r ent southward to study the volcanic district of Naples and ascend 

 Etna. On his return to London in February 1829, he began The 

 Principles, the first volume of which was published next year, while 

 he was making a geological tour in the Pyrenees and the volcanoes 

 of Catalonia. The second volume appeared in 1832, in which 

 year he married Miss Mary Horner, and the third in 1833. The 

 book was afterwards recast and divided into two, The Principles 

 and The Elements, published in 1840. Geological travel in Europe 

 had gone on steadily, but in the following summer Mr. and Mrs. Lyell 

 crossed the Atlantic and travelled for a year in Canada and the 

 United States, enlarging geological experience and getting so far as 

 Southern Carolina. Travels in North A nierica describes their journey. 

 In 1845 they undertook another tour in Canada and the States, 

 this time reaching the Gulf of Mexico, the results of which were 

 described in A Second Visit to North America. Though Lyell twice 



