DYNAMICAL GEOLOGY. 189 



The strongest combatant who entered the lists against the 

 catastrophal theory was Charles Lyell, 1 a Scotsman by birth. 

 Like his two older contemporaries, Alexander von Humboldt 

 and Leopold von Buch, Lyell had the good fortune to enjoy 

 an independent patrimony and to be able to devote himself 

 wholly to science. While he was a student in Oxford, he 

 attended Buckland's lectures And showed a great interest in 

 entomology. During one of his vacations he accompanied his 

 parents on a three months' tour through France, Switzerland, 

 and Upper Italy. It was then that Lyeli felt his enthusiasm 

 aroused for geological studies. Although he completed his 

 law course in the following years, he spent his leisure hours 

 on geology. In 1823 he was in Paris, where he made 

 the acquaintance of Cuvier, Humboldt, and Prevost, and 

 afterwards made excursions with Constant Prevost in the 

 West of England and in Cornwall. In the same year he 

 visited Scotland in the company of Buckland. 



The manuscript of his Principles of Geology was almost 

 complete in 1827, but before printing it Lyell felt the necessity 

 of being able to bear personal testimony upon many points. 

 Now followed a period in which he travelled to one place 

 and to another, collecting a large number of new data, and 

 enjoying the intercourse of the greatest geologists of his day. 

 In the companionship of Murchison and his wife, Lyell in 1828 

 visited Auvergne, the Velay and Vivarais, the Riviera, the 

 neighbourhood of Turin, Verona, and Padua. He then con- 

 tinued his journey alone to Parma, Bologna, Florence, Siena, 

 Rome, Naples and Sicily, and returned home by Paris. His 

 chief interest during these journeys was concentrated upon 

 volcanoes and the young Tertiary formations. 



The first volume of the Principles appeared in 1830, the 

 second in 1832, and the third in 1833. Meanwhile Lyell 

 continued to enrich his knowledge by frequent journeys to 



1 Charles Lyell (afterwards Sir Charles Lyell, Baronet) was born at 

 Kinnordy, in Forfarshire, Scotland, on the I4th November 1797, and was 

 the son of a rich proprietor and the eldest of ten brothers and sisters. He 

 passed his early childhood near Southampton, where his father had rented 

 a country-house, attended school at Ringwood and Salisbury, studied in 

 Oxford, then settled in London, and spent the rest of his life either in 

 London or in travelling. He died in 1875, and was buried in West- 

 minster Abbey. (T. G. Bonney, Charles Lyell and Modern Geology, Lon- 

 don, 1895, and Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., 

 edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell, 2 vols., London, 1881.) 



