666 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



cultivated with success at Catania, where the phe- 

 nomena above alluded to, and the great elevation 

 of the modern tertiary beds in the Val di Noto, and 

 the changes produced in the historical era by the 

 Calabrian earthquakes, would have been familiarly 

 known." 



Before Mr. Lyell entered upon his journey, he 

 had put in the hands of the printer the first volume 

 of his "Principles of Geology, being an attempt to 

 explain the former Changes of the Earth's Surface 

 by reference to Causes now in Operation" And 

 after viewing such phenomena as we have spoken 

 of, he, no doubt, judged that the doctrine of catas- 

 trophes of a kind entirely different from the existing 

 course of events, would never have been generally re- 

 ceived, if geologists had at first formed their opinions 

 upon the Sicilian strata. The boundary separating 

 the present from the anterior state of things crum- 

 bled away ; the difference of fossil and recent spe- 

 cies had disappeared, and, at the same time, the 

 changes of position which marine strata had under- 

 gone, although not inferior to those of earlier geo- 

 logical periods, might be ascribed, it was thought, 

 to the same kind of earthquakes as those which 

 still agitate that region. Both the supposed proofs 

 of catastrophic transition, the organical and the 

 mechanical changes, failed at the same time; the 

 one by the removal of the fact, the other by the 

 exhibition of the cause. The powers of earthquakes, 

 even such as they now exist, were, it was supposed, 



