58 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
The fixity of species had been attacked by Lamarck, but his view of 
the evolution of one species into another was emphatically rejected by 
British authorities. Buckland,!2 who was the President of the Association 
at its first full meeting, denied that he was in any way disposed to favour 
Lamarck’s theory of ‘the derivation of existing species from preceding 
species by successive Transmutations of one form of organisation into 
another form, independent of the influence of any creative Agent.’ 
Sedgwick"® repudiated ‘the doctrines of spontaneous generation and 
transmutation of species with all their train of monstrous consequences.’ 
The latter doctrine with all its momentous consequences was added to the 
principles of geology by a recruit of 1831. Early that year, Charles 
Darwin began the study of geology and on his return from his first long 
geological excursion, which he made with Sedgwick in North Wales, 
received the invitation to go as naturalist with the ‘ Beagle.’ He sailed 
in her from Plymouth in December, 1831. 
Darwin’s work on the voyage was mainly concerned with volcanic rocks, 
with gravity differentiation in molten rocks, with uplifts accompanying 
earthquakes, and with the evidence of widespread areas of subsidence 
and uplift as proved by his luminous and now firmly established theory 
of Coral Islands. Darwin’s work on crustal movements was of primary 
importance ; but by his doctrine of Evolution by Natural Selection, over 
which the tussle between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce made the 
Oxford meeting of 1860 famous, Darwin was the most potent influence on 
the thought of the Victorian era. Darwinism gave paleontology a guiding 
principle, which greatly enhanced the value of fossils, and relieved geologists 
of worry over such evidence as that in Chas. Moore’s paper to the Associa- 
tion at the York meeting of 1881 (Rep. B.A., p. 610) on the occurrence of 
feathers in the Laurentian rocks. Evolution gave Geology the fresh 
interest of gradually unrolling the panorama of life, and to fossils the 
additional importance of being the positive evidence of the lines along 
which organisms have developed. 
It is true that many evolutionists have rejected Darwin’s explanation 
of evolution as due to natural selection; but according to the general 
interpretation of the geological record, evolution has been mainly con- 
trolled by the environment and has proceeded slowly during the long 
periods of relative quiescence and more quickly when the tumultuous 
heaving of the crust produced relatively rapid changes in the physical 
conditions, as in the depth of the sea, in the temperature of sea-water, and 
in climate owing to the altered distribution of land and water and relief 
of the land. 
Whatever the conclusion may be as to the motive force of evolution, 
Darwin’s ‘ Origin of Species ’ convinced the world of the fact of evolution, 
and that the successive faunas and floras were part of a progressive series 
and not a number of independent special creations. 
The influence of Darwin on the whole Philosophy of Geology was so 
helpful that he was the dominant factor in its progress during the second 
quarter-century of the Association’s work. 
12 Bridgewater Treatise, vol. I, 1837, p. 585. 
18 Proc. Geol. Soc., vol. I, 1831, p. 305. 
