442 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. in. 



convulsions from time to time, vast floods swallowing up 

 plants and animals several times since the world was made, 

 violent earthquakes and outbursts from volcanoes shaking 

 the whole of Europe, forcing up mountains, and breaking 

 open valleys. It seemed to them that in those times when 

 the face of the earth was carved out into mountains and 

 valleys, tablelands and deserts, and when the rocks were 

 broken, tilted up, and bent, things must have been very 

 different from what they are now. And so they made im- 

 aginary pictures of how Nature had worked, instead of 

 reasoning from what they could see happening around them. 

 Sir Charles Lyell teaches that the Bocks of our 

 Earth have been formed by Natural Causes, such as 

 are still going on, 1830. The man who first broke through 

 these prejudices was our great geologist, Sir Charles Lyell. 

 Charles Lyell was bom in Forfarshire in 1797, the same 

 year that Hutton died. From his earliest childhood he had 

 a great love of Natural History and Science, but as his father 

 wished him to become a barrister, he went to Oxford to 

 follow the usual course. There he attended the lectures of 

 Dr. Buckland, the great geologist of that day, a-d this de- 

 cided him to devote his life to the study of geology. He 

 began first by examining the formations round about his 

 own home in Forfarshire, and he soon became convinced, 

 as Hutton had been before him (see p. 218), that we can 

 only learn the past history of the earth by observing the 

 causes now at work. 



What Hutton had suggested Lyell worked out. He col- 

 lected with great care all that is known of changes going on 

 now all over the world, and the causes which produce them. 

 Among these were 



istly. The fall of rain, and how it wears away the earth 

 and carries it off in little rills to the river. 



