Reviews — Life of 8ir Charles LyeJl, Bart. 363 



would ask any one to read the words quoted at the beginning of this 

 communication from Geol. Mag. 1881, p. 423, then look at the 

 Survey Map of Anglese}'^, and see if any possible conclusion could 

 be drawn other than the one I drew, viz. that Dr. Callaway accepted 

 the term metaraorphic, or altered, as applying to the patch of 

 northern Anglesey coloured "altered Cambrian." 



Dr. Callaway denies that a true passage occurs. We differ there- 

 fore on a matter of observation, which can only be settled in the 

 field. I have only one more quotation to make from Dr. Callaway's 

 paper. He says : " I will content myself with stating that when 

 Dr. Roberts has tJioroughly explored the island, he will find that 

 the Cambrians contain fragments derived from the ' gnarled series.' 

 This will place him in rather an awkward dilemma." I was already 

 aware that gnarled fragments occur in some of the conglomerates, but 

 I am placed in no dilemma, for I did nothing more in my former 

 communication than state certain observed facts. Various explana- 

 tions have suggested themselves, which as yet, however, have 

 hardly taken definite enough shape to be called even working 

 hypotheses. 



I?, IB "V I IE ^AT S. 



I, — Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Ltell, Bart. 

 Edited by his Sister-iu-law, Mrs. Lyell. 2 vols. pp. 476 and 489. 

 With Portraits. (London: John Murray, 1881.) 



XT is no exaggeration to say that Lyell did more than any other 

 man to advance geological science. Others there were who 

 helped much more than he to solve special enigmas concerning the 

 origin or relation of rock-masses, to unravel the structure of par- 

 ticular districts, or to interpret the life-history of the past ; in 

 personal eloquence, too, he was not unsurpassed ; but in enthusiasm, 

 and in the interest he took up to the last in the discoveries bearing 

 on his favourite science, he yielded to none, while in literary ability 

 he was unequalled among his geological contemporaries. 



The labour of his life was his " Principles of Geology ; or the 

 Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, considered as 

 illustrative of Geology." His work commenced at a time when the 

 science was looked upon as entirely a record of the past, and not 

 merely of past times but of past agents, for it was considered that 

 the forces now at work were not at all competent to produce the 

 changes so plainly evidenced in the earth's crust. Lyell's work 

 clearly established the fact that the present is but the continuation 

 of the past, unbroken by any universal gap or catastrophe ; and 

 although the strictly uniformitarian lessons that have been drawn 

 from his works are to some extent modified now, yet his method of 

 explaining geological changes, is continually corroborated by the 

 advances made in geographical knowledge. 



The life of one who worked such a revolution in geological 

 thought, as did Lyell, is calculated to attract all votaries of the science. 

 His early years were spent in the New Forest, where his father, 



